You’re the same God
You’re with me in the middle of it all, God
You’re catching every tear as it falls
I know You’ll never change
Even when I’m feeling far away
Hannah Kerr – Same God
On Sunday, Nicole sang Hannah Kerr’s Same God, and we talked about Hagar and Ishmael in the midst of our Relentless Love Series. I’ve been thinking about the lyrics of that song over the weekend and again this morning.
Over the past several years, our church has been on mission trips in the US to Alabama, Arkansas, Chattanooga (TN), Franklin (NC), Illinois, Kentucky, Ohio, and New Jersey. In the past, we’ve sent teams to Guatemala, Tanzania, and other countries around the world. In those places, we worshipped and served the same God that we worship and serve right here in Cleveland County. In my reflections on this song, I began to feel like that was the easy part.
It is somewhat easy to wrap our head around God being the same around the world. We know and trust that He is the creator of all things. It becomes natural to believe that if He created the whole world, of course He’s the same. To paraphrase the great philosopher Dr. Seuss, from there to here, and here to there, He’s the same God—everywhere.
However, there is a difficult side to the equation. It is more difficult, at least for me, to always believe and trust that He is the same no matter what I do. The song says that even when I’m running, I feel ashamed, feel broken and lonely, lose my way…even when I don’t believe it…still God loves me the same.
I heard a pastor say recently, “I subconsciously think well, God has to forgive me, but He doesn’t want to—and that’s just not the case. That’s not the narrative we see in scripture. God sent His son for us, to redeem His creation.”
We should be humbled to a place of worship knowing that the God of the universe—the God who makes the planets spin, tells the tide when it should rise, makes the seasons change, knows the number of the stars in the sky—that same God loves us the same.
What relentless love…
Prayer: God, thank you for your relentless love. Teach us to share it with others in the same way you give love to us. In Jesus’ holy name we pray, Amen.