Seventh-day Adventist® Church

Tomorrow (Sunday) the Olympic Torch will leave Durham and weave its way to Middlesbrough.

Oh, the clarion sound of Roger Whittaker singing "I'm gonna leave old Durham town" comes racing through my head.

In the song, the verses list a number of reasons why the singer will leave Durham town. His Daddy walked out the door, going to war, presumably not coming back. As a boy he'd watched the ships leaving on the river Tyne. Mama passed away, "Goodbye, son" was all she'd say. Now there is no reason for staying. So it's time to leave.

We might have all kinds of reasons for leaving. We leave to come back; we leave our digs to go to study, we leave home to go to work, we leave church only to come back.

We leave to get away; we leave a job, we leave a relationship, we leave town.

Our reasons for leaving are many.

But this is not a song that God will sing to us. He is not leaving, for any reason. In fact He is physically coming back.

But here and now we can experience His presence. God said to Joshua when Joshua took over leadership of maybe 1.5 million traveling Hebrews, "No one will be able to defeat you all your life. Just as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. I will not leave you or forget you." (Joshua 1:5 NCV)

Jesus, talking to His disciples before He left earth, told them how they should share their faith, and said, "... I will be with you always, even until the end of this age." (Matthew 28:20b)

We might have reasons for leaving, even leaving God, but He will never leave us. He said so. He promised!

Since God is with us, why not share some time with Him now. You and God. Alone. And again later. And again soon after that. All day. Continually. He's not leaving you. He hasn't forgotten you. You just have to stop and say hello.

-Pr Nathan Stickland