HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, June 9, 2025 – God is the consummate father, protecting and watching over his children throughout their time here on Earth. We’re not spiritual latchkey kids, we children of God; we’re not left to fend for ourselves while our heavenly Father is off elsewhere delivering judgement or rescuing stray sheep. No. God is perpetually with us through his Holy Spirit. At no time are we left alone.

For those who love God, his presence is a comfort. For those who hate him, it’s a threat.

And yet, being children—and even with our Father’s constant presence—we’re prone to stumbling into tricky situations, either through our own naivete, our own stupidity, or as a God-mandated test. In other words, we either bring these tricky situations on ourselves by our poor choices, or God will allow them to be brought on us to gauge where we are in our spiritual development. But unless our hour has come (that is, unless it’s time for God to take us Home), our heavenly Father will always intervene to help us in our trials.

God’s intervention can take many forms, depending on the type of danger and our initial response to it. The form it most frequently takes is shielding us, either supernaturally or physically or both, until the danger has passed. God did this most famously for baby Jesus when he was under a death threat by Herod’s kill decree. God also later intervened for Jesus, supernaturally shielding him so that he could walk unscathed (and seemingly undetected) through the enraged mobs at the temple and in Nazareth. These are just a few instances of God’s interventions that are mentioned in scripture, but the truth is that God intervened every day, all day, to protect Jesus, just as he intervenes every day, all day, to protect us.

Being whisked away and kept hidden is essentially the default position of God’s children whenever they face danger, particularly if they haven’t brought it on themselves. For the latter part of his ministry, Jesus basically lived his life on the run, as did the members of the early Church, for whom living in hiding, physically and miraculously, was the status quo. God keeps his children, then as now, either on the run or safely tucked away until the threat had been removed or their hour had come. As we know from the New Testament, being a member of the early Church was essentially a death sentence in some regions—but oh, what a glorious Homecoming! There’s no better way to lay down your life than in full service to God.

As the age draws closer and closer to the prophesied time of the end, we born-again believers should expect a revival of the days when we were hunted, imprisoned, and executed, though truth be told, the hunting, imprisoning, and executing hasn’t stopped for the last nearly 2000 years, even with the state-engineered institutionalization of Christianity. Genuine believers have always been a target if not for ‘permanent removal’ then at least for conversion from spiritual wrongthink, or what the worldly church calls heresy. Inquisitions, which were essentially church-and-state-sanctioned witch hunts of born-again believers who refused to come under the papal yoke, spanned nearly a millennium. And today, if I were to show up in certain Muslim-ruled countries with Bible in hand, I’d be forcibly ejected, imprisoned, or even in some cases stoned to death. We don’t have to wait for the coming of the so-called Anti-Christ to be persecuted; anti-christs have never stopped persecuting the Church since its establishment by Jesus. This is why it’s so crucial to remain always under God’s powerful protection.

In scripture, God promises us that he will never leave us or forsake us, and Jesus adds that he, too, will be right here with us. Both God and Jesus are keeping their promises, but neither of them ever mentioned that we’d have an easy go of it here on Earth, even with their constant presence. Being children of God and followers of Jesus pretty much paints a bullseye on us spiritually and socially, a branding that separates us from those who aren’t children of God or followers of Jesus and makes it socially, politically, and even legally permissible to ridicule and openly hate us. Jesus had to contend with the ridicule and hatred, and he warned us that we’d have to contend with it, too, though it’s a small price to pay for admission into God’s Kingdom on Earth, also known as Jesus’ Church.

Let whoever will mock me. I don’t hear them. It’s just so much background noise that has no meaning or value to me and blends in with all the other meaningless and valueless background noises that form the soundscape of a place that is not my home. Earth was never meant to be our home. It’s a place of testing, a place we’re just passing through, a temporary haven made for us by God but increasingly taken over by forces bent on destroying God’s creation, including us. Yet even amidst the constant noise and progressive encroachment of our turf by the enemy, we have the only peace that matters, thanks to the comforting and perpetual presence of God and Jesus.

There is no time when they’re not with us, whether we’re conscious of it or not. There is no time when they’re not with us, though there will come a time when none of us will be here anymore. God’s final intervention will be Jesus returning in glory with his angels to gather together the last of God’s children and take them Home. Once they’re safely whisked away, God and Jesus will also leave, never to return here again.

May you not be among those left behind. This is my prayer for you – that you not be among those left behind when the last of God’s children go Home.

Amen.

For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavillion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me up upon a rock. (Psalm 27:5)