The God Who Never Looks Away

On Second Thought

There is something deeply comforting about Psalm 121:3: “He will not allow your foot to be moved; He who keeps you will not slumber.” Human beings tire. We become distracted. We miss details, overlook people, forget promises, and sometimes emotionally withdraw from one another. But the God of Scripture never drifts into exhaustion or indifference. His care is continuous, alert, and active. The psalmist uses the language of a watchman guarding a city through the night. Ancient cities depended upon sentries who stayed awake while others slept. Yet even the most faithful guard eventually grows weary. God never does.

That truth stands behind Paul’s message in Acts 17 when he walked through Athens and observed an altar dedicated “TO THE UNKNOWN GOD.” The Athenians were deeply religious, yet spiritually restless. They feared overlooking some divine power, so they built an altar for the god they could not identify. Paul seized that moment and declared that the God they called unknown was actually the Creator of heaven and earth, the One who “does not dwell in temples made with hands” (Acts 17:24). Their gods were confined to shrines, rituals, and geography. The true God was not confined at all.

I find it insightful that Paul did not begin by attacking their ignorance. Instead, he redirected their longing. Deep inside every human being is the awareness that there must be something greater than ourselves. Ecclesiastes 3:11 says God has placed eternity in the human heart. The Athenians sensed transcendence but misunderstood its source. Many people today still live the same way. They acknowledge spirituality but keep God distant, abstract, or compartmentalized. He becomes someone visited on Sunday rather than someone present every moment.

Yet Scripture paints an entirely different picture. The Hebrew word in Psalm 121 translated “keeps” is shamar, meaning to guard, preserve, watch over, or attend carefully. It carries the image of attentive protection. God does not casually observe His people from afar; He actively watches over them. That means His presence is not limited to church buildings, prayer times, or moments of crisis. He is present in the ordinary rhythms of life. He is there when the alarm clock rings before sunrise. He is there during traffic delays, medical appointments, difficult conversations, lonely evenings, and quiet victories no one else notices.

Brother Lawrence, the seventeenth-century monk known for practicing continual awareness of God’s presence, once wrote, “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer.” That statement challenges many believers because we often separate sacred moments from ordinary moments. We assume God is near during worship songs but absent during grocery shopping. Yet Acts 17:28 declares, “For in him we live, and move, and have our being.” Every breath exists inside His sustaining presence.

This changes how I view both joy and suffering. If God never slumbers, then He has never missed a single detail of my life. He has seen every hidden tear, every private prayer, every disappointment I never explained to anyone else. At times we imagine ourselves abandoned because heaven feels silent. But silence is not absence. A parent sitting beside a sleeping child may say nothing, yet their presence remains real. God’s watchfulness does not depend upon dramatic emotional experiences. His covenant faithfulness continues whether we feel it strongly or weakly.

Jesus reinforced this truth repeatedly in His earthly ministry. He noticed the overlooked. He saw Zacchaeus hiding in a tree, the widow dropping two mites into the treasury, and the fearful disciples battling a storm at sea. Even while hanging upon the cross, He remained attentive to the needs of others, speaking comfort to the thief beside Him and entrusting His mother to John’s care. Christ revealed a God who remains engaged with human lives down to their smallest details.

There is also a humbling side to God’s continual presence. The Lord not only sees our pain; He sees our choices, motives, and attitudes. We cannot separate private life from spiritual life because no part of life exists outside His presence. That realization should not produce terror for the believer but reverence and comfort. The God who sees us completely is also the God who loves us completely through Christ.

Sometimes I think we spend much of life searching for signs that God is near while overlooking the evidence already surrounding us. The sunrise, the sustaining breath in our lungs, unexpected strength during hardship, Scripture speaking directly into our circumstances, the quiet restraint that kept us from collapse—all of these testify that the Keeper of Israel neither sleeps nor abandons His own.

On Second Thought:
One of the strangest paradoxes of the Christian life is that many people feel closest to God during moments when they are least in control. We often assume awareness of God will come through mastery, certainty, or spiritual achievement. Yet Scripture repeatedly shows that God’s nearness becomes clearest when human self-sufficiency begins to fail. Jacob encountered God while fleeing. Elijah heard God after emotional collapse. Paul discovered strength through weakness. The disciples truly understood Christ’s sustaining power while trapped in storms they could not calm themselves.

Perhaps that is because constant awareness of God requires the surrender of the illusion that we are self-sustaining. Modern life trains us to think in terms of independence, productivity, and control. We organize schedules, build plans, and manage outcomes as though vigilance alone secures our lives. But Psalm 121 quietly dismantles that illusion. The reason we can sleep is because God does not. The reason we can rest is because His watchfulness never ceases. The burden of ultimate control was never ours to carry.

This means God’s continual presence is not merely comforting; it is corrective. It reminds us we are creatures, not caretakers of the universe. Faith is not living as though everything depends upon me. Faith is living with confidence that everything ultimately rests in the hands of the One who never slumbers. Even when I cannot trace His activity, His guarding presence remains steady. The unknown moments of tomorrow are already fully known to Him today.

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The Unknown God

A Sermon about the Idols of Yesterday and Today

Acts 17:16–31

(Note: Sermons can be heard in audio format at https://millersburgmennonite.org/worship/sermon-audio/)

In our scripture this morning, Paul walks into Athens, a city overflowing with religion, beauty, ideas, temples, shrines, altars, arguments, and gods.

Athens is not empty.

Athens is crowded.

And Paul is deeply troubled.

Paul is not troubled because Athens is secular. He is troubled because Athens is religious in all the wrong ways. The city is full of worship, but empty of surrender. Full of gods, but not the living God. Full of altars but still haunted by absence.

For among all those altars, Paul notices one inscription:

To an unknown god.

What a haunting phrase.

In the middle of all the Athenians’ certainty, there is still this admission: we may have missed something. We may not know as much as we think. There may still be a God we have not recognized.

And I wonder if that is not where many people are right now.

Not atheists necessarily. Not even irreligious. But uncertain. Searching. Guarded. Spiritual, yet suspicious of certainty. Curious yet afraid of being closed off or closed in. Open and yet not really able to surrender to truth. Religious and yet still missing God.

La Atenas de Pablo no es solamente historia antigua; también describe nuestro mundo de hoy.

So Athens is not just ancient history.

Athens is now.

Let us pray.

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

Homily

Like the Athens of Paul’s day, our world today is full of altars too.

Altars to nation. Altars to wealth. Altars to image. Altars to safety. Altars to tribe. Altars to ideology. Altars to the market. Altars to the screen. Altars to the self.

We, like the Athenians, have all kinds of gods.

One reason I think our public discourse feels so fractured is that we are not just arguing about small things. We are bringing completely different belief systems into the room.

In Athens there were Jews who worshiped the one living God; God-fearing Greeks drawn toward that God but not fully committed; Epicureans who sought calm and freedom from fear; Stoics who valued reason, virtue, order, and discipline; and this strange altar to an unknown god, an altar that says, “We do not want to miss the divine. We know there is more than we can name.”

Paul proclaims a God who is not vague, not distant, not merely a principle, not one more option in the marketplace of ideas. Paul proclaims the God who made the world and everything in it, the God who gives life and breath to all, the God who cannot be reduced to shrines or captured in gold or silver or stone or circuitry, the God who is near to all, the God who now calls all people everywhere to repent because God has raised Jesus from the dead.

Pablo anuncia que Dios no es una idea vaga ni un ídolo más, sino el Creador que da vida, aliento y resurrección.

Some may believe truth is revealed and binding. Others are spiritual, but indefinite. Others have been wounded by the church and do not know whether the word “God” is invitation or threat.

And into all of that, Christian witness says: the world belongs to its Creator, and history has turned in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

When Paul is brought to the Areopagus, we might imagine a cozy invitation. Maybe there is curiosity there, but there is also something more serious. Paul is being examined. Tested. Weighed. Asked to explain himself in public.

Paul is heard, but under suspicion.

And how does he respond?

Not with coercion. Not with panic. Not with silence. Not with flattery. Not with domination.

He responds with witness.

Paul pays attention. He listens. He observes. He starts where the people are.

Pablo no responde con poder o miedo, sino con atención, humildad y testimonio.

Paul does not begin by quoting Moses. He does not begin where he is most comfortable. He begins with what his hearers can recognize: their altar, their poets, their longing, their language of divine nearness.

My friends, that is not compromise. That is faithful witness.

And this matters for us, because our witness cannot always sound exactly the same in every place, in every room, in every forum.

The gospel does not change. “Jesus Christ is Lord” – that doesn’t change either. The call to repentance, reconciliation, mercy, justice, truth, and abundant life this side of the resurrection does not change.

But the way we bear witness may depend on where we are and who is in front of us.

El evangelio no cambia, pero la manera de dar testimonio puede cambiar según el lugar y las personas.

When Paul is in the synagogue, he reasons from the scriptures. But when Paul is in Athens, among philosophers, idolaters, seekers, and skeptics, he begins somewhere else. He begins with creation. He begins with breath. He begins with longing. He begins with the altar they already have. He begins with the poetry they already know.

Paul does not start by asking them to enter his world. He first enters theirs.

That is not watering down the faith. That is speaking the truth in love. That is incarnation-shaped witness.

Pablo entra en el mundo de sus oyentes para poder anunciarles fielmente al Dios vivo.

Paul does not introduce Athens to a God who was absent until Paul arrived. Paul reveals the presence of a God they have already been brushing up against.

The God they called unknown has been waiting to be revealed.

Paul says this God gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. Paul says this God is not far from each one of us. Paul says, “In him we live and move and have our being.”

So maybe the question is not simply, “Will God show up?”

Maybe the deeper question is, “Will we recognize how God is already showing up?”

Which brings us to a question worth asking every day:

God, how are you going to show up today?

Not, “God, are you going to show up?”

But, “God, how are you going to show up?”

La pregunta no es solo si Dios aparecerá, sino si tendremos ojos para reconocer cómo Dios ya está presente.

Because Acts 17 reveals to us that God may already be present before people have the right language. God may already be at work before someone has the right doctrine. God may already be stirring longing before anyone knows how to name that longing.

God may already be there in the question. God may already be there in the difference. God may already be there in the ache. God may already be there in the crack in someone’s certainty.

Paul sees an altar to an unknown god, and he does not only see idolatry. He also sees longing. He sees an opening. He sees a place where witness can begin.

Dios puede estar obrando en la pregunta, en el dolor, en el anhelo, aun antes de que sepamos nombrarlo.

And then Paul does something just as important:

He does not stay there.

He builds a bridge, yes. But he also tells the truth.

He says, in effect, “The God you do not know is the God who made you. The God you have not recognized is the God who gives you breath. The God you have left unnamed is not contained in your temples. The God you seek cannot be reduced to your idols.”

Because idolatry is not just about statues.

Idolatry is whenever we try to bind God to our own systems of power and belief.

Idolatry is when nation becomes ultimate. Idolatry is when wealth becomes sacred. Idolatry is when violence is blessed. Idolatry is when “they” usurps “us.” Idolatry is when “my people” become more important than “humanity.” Idolatry is when our beliefs matter more than relationships. Idolatry is when our politics, grievances, fears, and identities begin to function as gods.

And let us be honest: the church is not exempt.

Athens is not only out there.

Athens is in here.

Athens is in us whenever we want a manageable god. Athens is in us whenever we want a useful god. Athens is in us whenever we want a god who blesses our side, confirms our assumptions, secures our system, and God forbid, never ever, disrupts our loyalties.

But Paul says the living God does not dwell in temples made by human hands.

That means God is not mine, yours, ours to manage.

Dios no pertenece a nuestros sistemas; nosotros pertenecemos al Dios vivo.

Which begs the question:

God, how are you going to show up?

Because we often want God to show up in familiar ways. Predictable ways. Comfortable ways. Worshipful, yes, but also manageable.

But what if the living God shows up in ways that unsettle us?

What if God shows up in the person we dismissed? What if God shows up in the hard conversation? What if God shows up in the exposure of an idol? What if God shows up in a call to repentance? What if God shows up not to decorate our little altars, but to overturn them?

There are some places where our witness begins with Scripture. Some where it begins with service. Some with silence. Some with apology. Some with saying, “Tell me more.”

There are some places where our witness begins not by answering a question no one is asking, but by noticing the altar in the room, the longing in the room, the wound in the room, the fear in the room, the unknown god in the room.

And yet, Christian witness does not end with vague spirituality.

Paul does not say, “Well, you have your gods, and I have mine, and maybe underneath it all we mean the same thing.”

No.

He moves to repentance.

He moves to judgment.

He moves to resurrection.

Because resurrection means God has shown up in Jesus Christ.

The unknown God is unknown no longer.

Not because we figured God out, but because God has acted. Because Christ has been raised.

El Dios desconocido se ha dado a conocer en Jesucristo, crucificado y resucitado.

Because death is not lord. Caesar is not lord. The economy is not lord. Violence is not lord. Fear is not lord. (Fill in the blank) is not lord. Like we say down South, those dogs don’t hunt.

Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord. Jesus Christ is Lord!

The Cosmic Christ is more than just our own personal Jesus. And that means resurrection is not just good news for me, or my private soul. Or you and your private soul.  It is the announcement of a new humanity under a new Lord. A new community. A new allegiance. A new public witness.

La resurrección anuncia una nueva humanidad bajo el señorío de Cristo.

That is who the church is meant to be.

Not simply a chaplain to the culture. Not another little religious booth in the marketplace of ideas. Not a baptizer of empire. Not a slave to ideology.

The church is the gathering of a resurrection people.

A people who do not only say, “God, show up.”

But a people who say,

God, help us recognize how you are showing up.

La iglesia existe para reconocer y encarnar la presencia del Cristo resucitado en el mundo.

So ask the question.

Ask it every morning. Ask it before worship. Ask it before the meeting. Ask it before the conversation. Ask it before you enter the room.

God, how are you going to show up?

And then ask the next question:

God, how are you calling me to show up?

To show up in worship, to show up in our community, to show up in the public square, to show up in the hard conversation, to show up in the awkward silence, and to show up in the uncomfortable moment when it would be easier to walk away.

My friends, we are the church of God. We are resurrection people, and resurrection people do not hide behind rose-colored stained-glass windows.

We show up because God first showed up.

We show up not because we are fearless, but because we are faithful. We show up not because every moment is easy, but because love is present. We show up not because we control the outcome, but because Christ is Lord. We show up not to dominate, not to coerce, not to win, but to bear witness.

Nos presentamos no para dominar, sino para dar testimonio con fidelidad, amor, humildad y paz.

And our witness may look different depending on where we are.

In worship, we show up with praise. In the neighborhood, with service. In conflict, with humility. In public life, with truth and peace. Among the wounded, with gentleness. Among the arrogant, with courage. Among the uncertain, with patience. Among the idols, with discernment.

Paul showed up in Athens.

He showed up in a city full of idols, in misunderstanding, under scrutiny, in the awkwardness of difference.

He showed up with a witness shaped by the place he was in.

He did not abandon the gospel.

He embodied it.

He trusted that God was already there ahead of him.

Pablo confió en que Dios ya estaba presente antes de que él hablara.

Maybe that is our calling too.

Not to have every answer. Not to control every room. Not to force belief.

But to show up with courage, humility, truth, and love, because the God who seemed unknown has already come near.

So this week, before you enter the room, begin the conversation, make the assumption, or speak the word, ask:

God, how are you going to show up here, in this moment, today?

And then ask:

Lord Jesus, how are you calling me to show up, here, in this moment, today, with you?

Because the God who was unknown has been made known, and the God who has been made known is still showing up, in us and in the people around us, in our homes and in the homes next door, in our neighborhood and in the communities down the road, in our nation and in all the nations of the world.

May God grant us open eyes and willing hearts to see and serve.

Let us pray.

#Nazis #Thiel #ACTS17

"When Peter Thiel recently delivered four private lectures warning that climate activists and tech industry critics are 'legionnaires of the Antichrist,' most coverage ended up focused on the carnival-like spectacle — apocalyptic language, religious fervor, sheer weirdness of a billionaire investor preaching eschatology into San Francisco 'tech elites'.

These reporters missed the point entirely, perhaps because historians are so rare these days.

The lectures, hosted by ACTS 17 Collective—a religious lobby group pushing church control over state through tech industry elites—are neither eccentric theology nor mysterious. As leaked to the Washington Post, they represent the latest iteration of a multigenerational fascist project: establishing sovereign territorial racist enclaves outside democratic accountability.

Understanding this requires historical rigor, not journalistic circumspection or diplomatic euphemism. Let’s be precise then: ACTS 17 Collective functionally is a return to overt promotion of the Nazi Lebensraum doctrines.

Lebenswhat?

I know, the word sounds like some kind of gross cake the neighbors bring over for the holidays.

The Nazis promoted a concept of Lebensraum (living space) to justify territorial expansion. Several interlocking claims were used:

• Superior people require separate territory

• The 'contaminated' mixed societies are irredeemable

• Wacky groundless mystical frameworks, meant to sound philosophical or even moral, provide legitimation

• Availability of space, or really existing populations are worthless and to be displaced or subordinated

• This expansion is civilizational necessity, not mere conquest or colonization. That’s how 'Mars' references, to the trained historian ear, have the unmistakable ring of 1960s Rhodesian or Namibian white flight.

The sophistication of modern tech fascism is that it replaces military conquest with silicon venture capital, and racial pseudo-science with scripture. But the core structure remains identical.

The Thiel surname itself appears repeatedly in Nazi records: Walter Thiel, a famous example, managed a Nazi techo-compound in the 1930s where his more than 700 slave laborers died producing weapons systems. When German newspapers today glorify this “Silicon Valley,” they’re explicitly connecting Nazi tech slavery to modern tech culture.

'. . . a part of the Nazi war machine, Thiel dreamed of . . . a rocket capable of manned flight to the Moon.'

(. . .)

The Genealogical Evidence

Peter Thiel’s father Klaus Thiel provides the clearest through-line. In 1967, Klaus departed Frankfurt on the eve of denazification intensification, relocating to Cleveland, Ohio. In 1971, he pivoted his United States papers into criminal work in apartheid-era Namibia (illegally occupied by South Africa), where he managed the Rössing uranium mine from a Nazi enclave. His clandestine illegal nuclear weapons supply operation was being reported for Black workers 'dying like flies' from radiation exposure, while white managers like Klaus enjoyed country club privileges. In 1977, Klaus abruptly fled his racist enclave of Namibia when Black majority rule no longer could be blocked, settling into Reagan-era California’s white-flight suburbs.

The Klaus Thiel story is NOT a normal economic migration.

(. . .)

President Trump regularly parrots 1970s racist extremist doctrine when fraudulently attacking cities as unsafe or in 'decline.' This echoes Klaus Thiel’s 1970s Namibia rhetoric about 'failed' multiracial governance—the same lens Peter Thiel applies to San Francisco today, marking its prosecutorial reform, equitable history teaching, and social treatment of homelessness as signs of an 'irredeemable' city. It’s the Nixon 'Urban Renewal' playbook: frame diverse, democratic governance as failure requiring white-flight (abandonment) or destruction and replacement.

Thiel told Stanford classmates that apartheid 'works” and is 'economically sound.' His current projects apply the same logic: democratic, diverse society is dysfunctional; superior people require separate sovereign space of exclusivity."

https://www.flyingpenguin.com/?p=72981