Zephaniah 3:15-17 NIV
[15] The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm. [16] On that day they will say to Jerusalem, “Do not fear, Zion; do not let your hands hang limp. [17] The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.”
What would the world be like if we acted as if the Lord was someone we knew or met all the time? How would be treat him or her? Of course the Lord is in our midst and God is in each and every one we meet. How quickly we forget the meaning of the words we say. "We are made in the image and likeness of God." "We are all God's children." "I am with you always." "Where two or three are gathered together, there am I." There's a story about an abbey in a forest where the monks were so happy they sang while they worked and prayed and people flocked to them. Then something changed, and the cook started fighting with the gardener and the shepherd with the houseman and the singing stopped and people stopped coming and the Abbot didn't know what to do. Then he went to visit the wise man in the woods. He said to the Abbot, tell them the Lord is in their midst. He went back and told them what the wise man said. The cook thought to himself, what if it's the gardener. The shepherd wondered if it was the houseman. Everyone began to treat everyone else as if he was the Lord. Soon the joy returned to the Abbey and the singing and then the people. The Lord is in our midst, we need to bring back the joy.
