Sue Allen, Director of Women’s Ministries at Northside Church, recently published a devotional that I’m sharing with permission.

The omnipresent God whose name is not distant but nearer to us than we can imagine. God is not alien to the circumstances of our lives but comes to us in them. It is relatively

easy to meet God in moments of joy or bliss. In these situations, we correctly count ourselves blessed.

The challenge is to believe that God is also true — and to know God’s presence — in the midst of doubt, depression, anxiety, conflict or failure. But the God who is Immanuel is equally in those moments we would never choose as in those we would always gladly choose.

Richard Rohr reminds us that “we cannot attain the presence of God. We’re already totally in the presence of God. What is absent is our awareness” (David Benner’s The Gift of Being Yourself, 41).

Immanuel. What a beautiful name. God with us.