Every day I try to read this daily devotional written by CH Spurgeon. There’s a morning and an evening passage with Spurgeon’s notes/thoughts on the passage. I usually end up reading the evening one the next day because I almost always forget to read it in the actual evening.

Yesterday’s evening passage brought me to an interesting passage of scripture: Ezekiel 35:10.

“Because you said, ‘these two nations and these two countries shall be mine and we will take possession of them’–although the Lord was there–“

Spurgeon is trying to get us to see one basic aspect of God we sometimes under-appreciate: that He’s always there.

In Ezekiel, we’re talking about God’s chosen people, and how they cannot truly be conquered because God is always with them on their side.

In our daily lives here in the 21st century, Spurgeon draws us this picture:

“If the Lord be with us through life, we need not fear for our dying confidence; for when we come to die, we shall find that ‘the LORD is there;’ where the billows are most tempestuous, and the water is most chill, we shall feel the bottom, and know that it is good: our feet shall stand upon the Rock of Ages when time is passing away. Beloved, from the first of a Christian’s life to the last, the only reason why he does not perish is because ‘the LORD is there.'”

No matter what, we survive because God is always with us. Because we wouldn’t make it without Him. Because the only reason why anything virtuous or lovely survives in us is because “the LORD is there.”

Jehovah Shammah: “The Lord is there.”