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\u201cThe Lord replied, \u2018My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.\u2019 Then Moses said to him, \u2018If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?\u2019 And the Lord said to Moses, \u201cI will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.\u201d (Exodus 33:14, 15, 17)

There is a saying I\u2019ve mentioned before. \xa0It goes like this:\xa0

All life includes change.
All change includes loss.
Every loss needs to be grieved.

COVID is quickly disappearing from our memory. \xa0Strange that it should\u2014such a major, life-changing moment as it was. \xa0A similar thing happened after the Flu pandemic of the early 1900\u2019s though. \xa0People just moved on and quit talking about it as quickly as they could.\xa0

And yet, a conversation I had yesterday reminded me of the fact that over these past years of COVID, so many of us experienced a huge acceleration of change and loss in our lives. \xa0It struck me then that a real burden of grief continues to linger in the background for many of us, whether we always realize it or not. \xa0It comes out as anger, as loneliness, as busyness, as anxiety\u2014all sorts of different ways\u2014but it\u2019s there.

We might forget, but many of the most significant stories of our scriptures live in that same place with us. \xa0It is Good Friday with Jesus on the cross\u2026 with the disciples mourning through a long Saturday\u2026 with Job on the ash heap\u2026 with David in the valley of the shadow of death\u2026 with the Israelites in the wilderness. It\u2019s well-trodden territory.

Two things permeate each of those bleak valleys of grief, doubt, and loss: our questions and the God we ask them to. \xa0Like Jesus\u2019 \u201cwhy?\u201d of forsakenness in the garden or Moses\u2019 \u201chow?\u201d in the desert. \xa0God heard each question, as He does all our doubts and laments. \xa0For Moses and the Israelites, he even answered directly: \u201cI know you by name. My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.\u201d

That was far from an immediate solution. It would still be 38 years more in the desert before the Israelites arrived in the promised land. That\u2019s a long time of doubt, wandering, and grieving\u2014longer by far than COVID lasted. But the Israelites survived and even flourished under the some of the harshest conditions of change, loss, and scarcity on earth in that time\u2014not because they had any control, or because they grinned and bore it, or avoided it altogether\u2014but simply because God\u2019s presence was with them, and His promise of rest stood before them. \xa0It turns out: that was enough.

In Hebrew, the word for God\u2019s \u201cpresence\u201d is the same as the word for God\u2019s \u201cface.\u201d The blessing of \u201cthe Lord make His face to shine upon you\u201d is all about God\u2019s presence. \xa0That blessing isn\u2019t about things changing back to the way they were before or new things coming to fill up what\u2019s been lost\u2014it is about God\u2019s presence with us through whatever changes we experience. The strange conviction of our faith is that a God who is Immanuel\u2014with us\u2014in the valleys of our pain and grief is enough.

So, take heart: God is with you. \xa0What griefs from the changes and losses of these past years do you still carry that you might share with him today?

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