August 6, Ordinary 18A (Isaiah 55:1-5; Psalm 145:8-9, 14-21; Matthew 14:13-21)
I can’t fathom a God who isn’t personal—and personally accountable.
Our God is imminently immanent. That’s what strikes me as I read the lectionary passages for this week. They spell out or allude to the realities of human struggle and conflict in this journey of faith we call life. And they reveal God as Immanuel, as with us.
These texts also point me to the rich theological mother wit of my ancestors. In my tradition, the senior saints—the plainspoken believers of my grandparents’ generation—often gave testimony of a God who “sits high and looks low.” If that vantage point sounds cosmically distant, think again. This sittin’-high, lookin’-low God “always comes to see about his children,” as the senior saints would say. It’s a characterization of the promised immanence of God, of God’s love and justice that secure God’s children and instructs them in the way to live. This is also a God who “may not come when you want him, but he’ll be there right on time.”
This week’s psalm underscores why: this covenant God is devoted to God’s children. Gracious, merciful, good, just, giving, and near—Psalm 145 proclaims the reality of a God who is on our side, who favors us, and whom we love and obey in grateful response. This is the God about whom I heard my people testify in the words of Doris Akers’s song:
