Who is now out of your life that you miss? A friend? A sibling, parent or even a spouse? And whoever grieved the absence of someone that didn’t matter?

How much does presence matter? One way we can measure this is by how much you’ve been affected by someone’s absence. The biblical term “holy” means incomparable or irreplaceable. As we consider holiness as someone’s distinct or unique qualities — such as God’s incomparability — someone’s presence can be holy, with a little “h.”  In love, there is no substitute for someone being with you.

Someone’s absence may be a matter of indifference in many ways; after all, 8 billion people on the planet right now are not with you, and you are probably glad. But for the people who matter to you, if they, or you, are absent from one another, it is the problem of finitude. We are not omnipresent.

We simply cannot be everywhere.  We are bound by time and space, therefore we have to choose to be wherever we are, and by implication, everywhere else that we are not. We have to choose, and also those choices reflect what we value. When have you chosen to be at work instead of being at home or at a family function? When did you feel obligated to be where you were — like at school — when by all things considered, you’d rather be somewhere else? Yet… there you stayed.

We live in tension because of multiple values and multiple valuable people. Therefore, the choice of presence takes on more and more significance as we mature. As we sense the shrinking bank account of time, the tension can really intensify.

Technology and artificial intelligence are pitching us on “life unlimited,” but what we’re really being offered is imaginary life; it’s not real at all. An experience of images and imagination cannot take the place of a real person really present with you.

So, if your faith is in Jesus, how does He help us to invest wisely in the treasure of presence?

First, only the LORD is always present. So if we consider presence as a commodity, then undeniably, He has and offers the most because only He is infinite. As yet another aspect of His holiness, the Living God, our Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is fully everywhere, always truly and fully present. This means that in Christ, we are inexpressibly wealthy because of His abiding Presence with us.

Second, His Incarnation — coming to be with us on this earth in the flesh for a season — was aimed at the ultimate goal of securing our presence with Him forever. This means that (as Paul says) “while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord…we walk by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:6-7)  Our absence from Jesus bodily is temporary. But the very reason that He ever came was to make it so that we will never be separated from Him eternally. This is our greatest hope out ahead of us — what people in the ancient church called “the beatific vision,” getting to see Jesus finally, face-to-face. Jesus lost the greatest Presence He had ever had on the cross — that of His Father. But He sacrificed that — in a temporary agony that we cannot fathom (and into which angels long to look) — in order to secure a connection, a relationship, a status, and a presence that we can never lose and that no one can ever take from us.

Third, His Presence by His indwelling Spirit helps to sustain us in the meantime. God’s true, real Presence within our hearts helps us while we wait to be gathered to Jesus. And His being with us supports us when we cannot have or enjoy someone else’s presence for a time…  Many in our church have suffered the loss of a loved one. Many yearn once again for the company of a fellow believer who has gone on ahead of us. And like my campus minister told me in college (when I realized that with my graduation, our time together was coming to an abrupt end), “We are going to be separated now, but only for a time. And before we know it, we are going to be together at the feet of Jesus, forever and ever!”