Everyone needs someone to ask the question to prompt the response.
Where is Jesus? We are created in community purposefully so that we can encourage one another to seek Him, and to find Him… because He is always there.
And to keep having people ask you that question until you ask it for yourself without even thinking about it. Stick around to mindfully see where He appears. It’s not just in our hearts, or up in heaven. He will go with you anywhere. He is outside of time and will shelter you and walk with you in your past, your favorite safe place, watch Netflix with you, stare at that stack of dirty dishes with you- He is always there. Because we are His, and His creation is sacred. A friend and I playfully closed our eyes once and we said, ok point to where Jesus is in the room. We both pointed to the same place. Jesus has a sense of play and fun too.
I consciously started asking that question to myself, where is Jesus, along time ago. I created landscapes (I can’t remember how or why) that Jesus and I were in for a long time together. There were two interruptions that changed the sense of who I thought Jesus was in these places- One person exclaimed to me once, He is more than just your defender and your brother! Which left the question, then what? And how much more? It took a couple years to open myself to what the more was. The second, was when I had been practicing being with the Lord in prayer more deliberately, I saw Jesus appear to me sitting on a stone garden bench. He gestured to me and patted the bench for me to join him. I remember physically feeling flushed with awkward! Because outside of the times he appeared with me on mountains, and rickety boats in the Amazon, in my imagination, when people said to hand my cares to Jesus, or my sin, or baggage or all the bad things, I would put them in this sack and turn to where I imagined Jesus must have sat, which was about 6ft above me. I could only see his feet. And there I would place what troubled me, knowing he would take it, but also with no further connection to the lover of my soul than a transaction of releasing trouble and going about my day.
Until He patted to me on the stone bench. To come closer. To sit beside Him. And it was uncomfortable. And never mind trying to gaze at Him in my imagination! That seemed impossible. To understand the wholeness of COVENANT, we blush at how intensely He loves us and calls us friend. It took another two years to go with Him into those secret places, but I felt compelled to pursue it. And it is absolutely worth fighting for.
So if you are where I was. Then begin.
Where is Jesus?
He has something to say to you.
He has something to give you.
He loves you immensely. Can you look into His eyes and see that He means it?