Be Here Now

“Here?” I asked Jesus this morning during our chat. “I’m not sure that I want to be here today.”

“Oh, where is it that you’d like to be?

“There”

“There?”

“Yes, there.”

“Why there?” Jesus asked.

“Cause it’s happening over there.”

“It is?”

“Sure, take a look, Jesus. Everybody is there.”

“Everybody?”

“Everybody.”

“I don’t think so.”

“No? Who’s missing?”

“You, for one.”

“But that was my point!” I say in frustration.

“I have you here today,” He tells me patiently.

“Ya, I noticed,” as I grump and head to my office to have the rest of my devotions alone.

I decide to finish watching the video I started the night before. A friend taught in a church on the other side of the country last weekend and the message had been put online. One of his themes resounded in my soul: Live in this day’s grace.

It sounded like a good plan. I went back out to the living room.

“Is there grace for today?” I asked him.

And in response Jesus smiled.

I decided to have lunch with a new book so I went to the corner Starbucks, one of my favorite places to read. I stared at the cover of “Nine Ways God Always Speaks: *Offer Only Available In Certain States” hoping to God that Idaho was one of the states in the equation. I didn’t get far in the pages; a friend unexpectedly walked through the doors, sat down in the seat across from me and smiled. It wasn’t lost on me that this friend was one that had traveled with me to there in the past. But today we were here, and it was good.

Later in the afternoon my phone rang. I was surprised to hear from this colleague. I thought he was, you know where, there. But he wasn’t, he informed me; it didn’t work out for him and he was at home, like me. And to top it all off he told me that he hadn’t called, he had tried earlier in the day when I was at Starbucks, but this time his phone reached out to touch me by itself, or maybe with someone else’s help. We chatted, shared and cared for each other. And I smiled.

Then this evening I got a sweet tweet, 140 characters of grace letting me know that a friend’s travel plans somehow got holy messed up. He was flying from Point A to Point B and there was an unplanned plane change in Boise with a short layover. Although Boise isn’t really known as the hub of airline connections, two hours later my friend whose online message I'd listened to this morning smiled at me as he walked through the gate and personally gave me a hug’s worth of today’s amazing grace.

I’m back in the living room now, filled up and overwhelmed.

“Here?” Jesus asks me smiling.

“Yes” I respond contentedly, “Here.”