Luv Is A Verb: Let God Be With You

I have a picture I carry in my Bible. For four years, it got taped in my planner at the beginning of each school year and now it gets carried around in my Bible. For six years, I have carried this picture around with me and time has taken its toil on this picture. It is tattered and ragged but I continue to carry it with me because of the reminder that it holds.

Taken with a disposable camera and really blurry, at first the picture may not look like much. I took the picture my freshmen year of college during a spring break trip with Habitat for Humanity to Ocean Springs, Mississippi. During the trip we stayed at CampVictor, which housed a variety of volunteers and coordinated relief work for these volunteers to do. In the dining hall, there were several banners with words of encouragement that had been sent shortly after Hurricane Katrina. One of the banners was covered in messages written mostly in the hand-writing of small children with the messages generally being something to the effect of “May God be with you." However, one message on the board stood out to me. Rather than writing "May God be with you", one child had written "Let God be with you":

At the time I took a picture because what I thought was a child’s misprint struck me as cute; however, as time has passed that “misprint” has come to hold a much deeper meaning. And whether or not it was a “misprint” or not, I think there is incredible wisdom in the child’s words.

During my summers working at Camp EWALU, we would start every worship service with an invocation. Before doing our invocation, we asked the campers to tell us what an invocation was and the standard response was “the time when we invite God into our worship.” We would then go on to talk a bit about the fact that even though God is always with us we need to take the time to be intentional about welcoming God into our lives and recognizing God’s presence in our every day moment.

There are moments when I struggle to remember these lessons. When I am faced with a 403 mile long, 25 foot high “security fence.” When I am faced with one of the approximately 144 checkpoints that are generally guarded by soldiers younger than me. When I hear about the 10 Palestinian children killed in a bus accident and read comments of celebration bysome Israelis. In these moments it is hard to remember to look for God.

However, the picture in my bible serves as my reminder of my need to do my own invocations in my daily life. God may not always be obvious, but if I am willing to invite God and “let God be with me,” I remember that God is actually around me all the time.

While I may have to be a bit more intentional about looking, I remember that I can see God in so many different aspects of my everyday life here. I can see God in:

In the people who come to visit and are willing to listen to a different narrative and the people who have the courage tell their stories and the sharing of these stories across generations.

In 50 volunteers who are willing to travel to Palestine, not only to visit the sites but also to make a positive change by spending a week planting olive trees through a program with Alternative Tourism Group

In the genuine joy and love of children and their ability to look past differences and see people as people

In the joys of friendship and the ways in which new friendships form and old friendships grow despite change and distance.

In the beautiful and incredible women that I now get to call friends and family and the ways that we have grown through the joys and challenges of being YAGM's