The Omnipresence of the God of Love

By Peter Falkenberg Brown

July 6, 2025

In 2025, many people are experiencing severe stress about the state of the world and the acrimonious divisions between people. I find it extremely helpful to reflect on God’s presence in every person’s life. With that in mind, I offer this essay, excerpted from my book The Living Compass of Kindness and Compassionate Love: Essays on Love, Beauty, and the Mystical Path.

Psalm 139 of the Old Testament beautifully affirms the omnipresence of God in verses 7 through 10:

“7 Whither shall I go from thy Spirit? Or whither shall I flee from thy presence? 8 If I ascend to heaven, thou art there! If I make my bed in Sheol, thou art there! 9 If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 10 even there thy hand shall lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.”

It is central to the Judeo-Christian faith that God is always with each and every person, “keeping watch on the evil and the good.” (Proverbs 15:3)

Paul spoke to the men of Athens about “the God who made the world and everything in it” (Acts 17:24), stating that “he is not far from each one of us, for ‘in him we live and move and have our being.’” (Acts 17:27-28)

To me, these verses provide clues to the astounding reality that God’s omnipresent love for each human being is far more real, intimate, tender, passionate, and all-encompassing than is generally understood or experienced.

Why is this important? Humans can experience beautiful relationships of love with their mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, relatives, friends, husbands, wives, and children. Some last a lifetime, while others fail or dissipate. None of them are omnipresent. One can carry love for someone in one’s heart continuously, but that person is not present all the time, in every place. Perhaps relationships can become “quantum” in the sense that they can spiritually reach across space or time. Yet, even still, none of them are fully omnipresent.

God is the only being who loves each person with omnipresent love in a thoroughly personal way. That is momentous in itself, but its value for and impact on human life is incredible. Not only can each human being affirm that we are never alone, but we can also eventually understand that we are loved—always. We can’t necessarily rely on any human being since all of them are fallible. But, we can absolutely rely on the presence of God’s intimate and personal love for each of us. What a blessing and what a miracle!

Of course, to even consider the reality of an omnipresent God, one must accept that God exists and also have some idea of what God might be like. The Judeo-Christian God is a God of personality and a God of love, which makes it possible to have a relationship with God. But is all of that true?

No one can prove that God exists or prove what “God is like.” We can, however, use logic and what I call “the evidence of love” in the created world. To delve into those questions, I refer you to the essay in this book called “Is There a God and What Is God Like? Exploring the Evidence of Love.”

The first question to ask when one examines the idea of God being omnipresent is to confirm that there is only one Creator and Source of the infinite universe. When one says “yes” to that question (which I do), then the conclusion is that everything everywhere was not only created by God but is also part of God’s infinite, invisible, living, connected, quantum essence.

This view was reflected in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, in Verse 4:6, when he described God as “one God and Father of us all, who is above all and through all and in all.”

To say that God is “always present” means that God is always present in all of time and all of space. By that definition, it’s impossible to travel to a point in space and time where God is not present because if that were true, then what would that point and moment consist of? There is no other creator, and nothing exists anywhere that was not created by the one intelligent source of the universe. One must also remember that both space and time are infinite in both directions, which reflects God’s nature and being as an infinite creator. Using space as an example, there is no limit to the largeness or the smallness of creation. We can always add one more number to a sum, and we can always divide a number into a smaller part.

Thus, God is present at all times, and God is present everywhere—in every wave of energy, every particle, and every thought. God’s mind, personality, and energetic essence are infinite, all-encompassing, and aware of everything. Because of that, a human can literally say, from an energetic and spiritual point of view, that “God is all of me, and I am part of God.” This reality is also expressed in the phrase “God is all there is.”

This doesn’t mean that a rock or a tree is sentient in the same way that humans are sentient, but it does mean that the mind of God is what keeps everything going, and thus, the rock and tree are part of the infinite God as well. We can logically infer that the rock and tree are resonant with the mind and energy of God in their own particular way.

What can we extrapolate from this definition of God’s omnipresence? From a practical point of view, regarding the daily life of humans, it means that God is present with everyone “all the time.” Every day. Every night. Every minute and every second, no matter what we’re doing. Some might say, “Wait! Not all the time. Even during embarrassing or unmentionable moments? Even during the moments that someone acts in an evil way or commits unspeakable crimes?”

Yes. Even then. All the time. Every microsecond, which is defined as “a millionth of a second.” In between the microseconds, as well. There’s nowhere that you can go, and nowhere you can hide where God is not present with you, watching you, being with you, and most importantly of all, loving you. Of course, this raises two enormous questions:

* Why can’t we feel God’s presence and God’s love if God is always with us?

* How can God be with someone as that person commits an evil deed?

Why humans are unaware of God’s indwelling and loving presence is answered in many doctrinal ways. I prefer to focus on how we can restore that awareness because that restoration transforms a person. I call the condition of being unaware of God’s omnipresence “the blind puppy syndrome.” Imagine a puppy that cannot see or hear or smell or feel any sensation at all and is thus completely unaware that it’s being cradled in the arms of a human who is whispering to it, stroking its head, and kissing it. The puppy, in its loneliness and confusion, continues to whimper but tragically cannot sense how close it is to love.

Humans, to varying degrees, are like that puppy. Our spiritual senses are damaged, and we cannot sense how close God is to each of us. Thus, our most important task is to work very hard to restore our awareness of God by healing our sensory inputs and opening our mind and heart to the reality of God.

What we should not do is blame God for our own broken heart and lack of spiritual sensitivity to God’s presence. A non-doctrinal answer to why we can’t feel God’s love can be answered by looking at our personal history and the history of the human race as a whole.

How much were we loved by our human parents, relatives, brothers and sisters, and all whom we met? To use an extreme example, if a child is beaten by his parents his entire life, will his capacity to feel, receive, and then give love to others be damaged? Of course it will. Human history is mostly a sad and tragic history of the death of love.

It is love that allows us to become sensitive to love. Our created nature as a human being is to be completely connected to God’s love and become a partner with God, conveying God’s love to all.

The functional answer to why we often cannot feel God’s love is that the gift of free will created the necessity for emotional and spiritual growth. Every human has to learn how to love and has to grow in his or her capacity to express divine love to others. It is not automatic or instinctual and becomes horrendously difficult when we are hurt by others. It’s also something that must be learned by every new generation of children, no matter how good their parents might have been.

Humanity has suffered as it has because it is rare to find families, societies, and nations that raise and teach their children that God lives within them and wants them to express God’s love to every human being.

When Christianity was at its best, over the last two thousand years, the ethics of love and charity multiplied, and a peaceful culture advanced. It should not be forgotten or minimized that the original teachings of Jesus about sacrificial love impacted and improved the world in an unprecedented fashion.

When religions—including Christianity—departed from that ethical center, or worse, when atheism spread, violence and tragedy were the unfortunate results. Ultimately, individual lives were impacted, for better or worse. Nothing can change the fact that every human being has their own path to follow and must find God’s love and fall in love with God on their own. It is not simple or easy, but it is something that everyone can do if they try hard enough and long enough.

Believing in God’s omnipresent embrace of love is a vital first step to finding God. But can God love us when we fall short, which most of us do every single day?

The question of whether or not God remains with someone who commits a crime or what some might call a sin is both an emotional and technical question.

The concept that “God is all there is” precludes the possibility that God can depart from someone or be absent. This can’t be emphasized enough because a common religious view is that God turns away from “sinners” and even abandons people with whom He is displeased. Thus, many people feel that God cannot possibly love them because they’re not good enough to deserve God’s love. The conviction of not being worthy of being loved by God drives a person even farther away, which is indeed a tragedy.

Remember, omnipresence means that God’s mind and heart are everywhere, all the time. If God were not omnipresent, perhaps one could imagine that God lives in a dwelling somewhere and has angels running the universe, and every once in a while, God comes and visits a person if they’re good. Some might say that God simply pushes energy out to the universe and then sits back, disconnected from the details of life.

The view of a detached God is illogical when one considers that new and potent life is always being created. A human baby, a blue jay chick, and a freshly created butterfly all share the spark of new, creative life—and love—that reflects God’s intelligent and loving presence rather than a mechanistic universe running on autopilot.

What energy is keeping the universe running? Since there is no other creative source of the universe, it must be God’s energy. What energy allows the mind and invisible thoughts and emotions of a person to continually function? What energy allows love to exist everywhere?

In all examples, it must be God’s invisible essence. Not just some mechanistic energy that is “created by God,” but rather the energy that is God. As we step through this logic, we can see that God has to be omnipresent. If He were not, love could not exist everywhere, and the universe would collapse.

But then, if God is always present, how can God allow someone to sin or commit a crime? The answer to that comes back to free will. Some might say that since free will allows a person to commit an evil deed, it would be better to remove free will. Totalitarians tend to think so and say things like: “Improve society by forcing people to be good.”

But free will should be examined in depth and cherished beyond measure because it is free will that gives each person the capacity to creatively and freely love like God. Free will gives humans the ability to become divine.

Since humans have been given free will, God doesn’t stop a person from acting in an unloving way. This doesn’t mean that God doesn’t encourage a person to be loving. It simply means that when a person ignores the universal truths of morality and goodness, God doesn’t stop the person, even though God must logically feel grief about the perpetrators of selfish acts and the victims who are harmed.

It seems to also be true that since God is working with and assisting everyone and, according to testimonies and religious texts, guiding good spirits and angels to help individuals, the effects of evil deeds are frequently blocked. To me, this is additional evidence of God’s love for all human beings. Even though God chooses to not directly stop a person from committing an evil deed, there are other steps that God takes to protect people that don’t violate the principle of free will.

Evil actions come about because of separation between each person and God. When a person cannot resonate with or understand the beauty of compassionate and unselfish love, their actions drift away from the realm of love into darker and darker arenas. It often happens so incrementally that the person doesn’t notice and ultimately—at least superficially—no longer cares.

Yet, when we examine both the good and evil deeds of history, we will discover evidence that a force of love and goodness exists in the souls of all human beings. If that were not true, the freedom to be evil would have created an irredeemably dark and hopeless world. But the light of the human soul cannot be and has never been extinguished. Love continues, in every century and year and day.

This is evidence that “the gifts and the call of God are irrevocable,” as it says in Romans 11:29. No one is irredeemable.

What does it really mean, for each person, that God is omnipresent? A practical result of this view is that we can have confidence that the indwelling God lives in and as each person but also relates to each person as a separate being—outside of each person. Thus, we can know that we are all temples of God while, at the same time, we can pray to and communicate with the God who is much bigger than each of us. This was affirmed by Jan van Ruusbroec, the fourteenth-century Dutch mystic who wrote, “God in the depths of us receives God who comes to us: it is God contemplating God.”¹

To be constantly aware that “God is all of me and I am part of God” provides indescribable solace. No one can be closer to us than God. No one knows us better or more intimately than God.

Genesis 1:27 states, “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” In spite of this assertion, God is generally viewed as a male creator. However, the view of God as the sole creator of the universe leads inevitably to the conclusion that since God created both male and female, God must indeed possess both of those attributes within one infinitely complex personality.

Consider the idea that “God is all there is” and the reality that women exist. As men know, women are very different from men. If a woman can also say that “God is all of me, and I am part of God,” it means that God’s feminine essence lives within and as that woman. It means that the spiritual, mental, and physical traits of women were created by a God who shares those traits, as God also shares the traits of men.

The logic behind this concept is very simple and is expressed in Romans 1:20: “Ever since the creation of the world his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity, has been clearly perceived in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse.”

This verse refers to the “artist-creation” model. If an artist knows absolutely nothing about women, how they look or feel or think, or anything else at all, then that artist will not be able to paint a picture of a woman. Thus, since God created both men and women and sunsets and puppies, one can discern something about God’s character, nature, mind, and heart.

It might seem strange to use logic as a tool to discover God, but why shouldn’t we? In fact, since all humans understand logic to some degree, it can be safely said that God is supremely logical. Among many other traits.

These ideas will seem like heresy to some, but they should not. It doesn’t mean that there are two Gods: one male and one female. It simply demonstrates that God is so huge and so complicated that every person can say, “God is all of me.” Every person can feel loved by God in the most intimate fashion possible.

God’s omnipresence turns out to be the reason that God is so completely personal to every human being. It also demonstrates that the love that God created in each individual is logical proof that life continues beyond the death of the physical body. If we accept that God is eternal and that God loves each individual in a deeply personal way, then we can safely assume that an eternal God would have every reason to create a spiritual world where each person can continue to live with God forever.

This also affirms the value of each person’s unique identity and why the theories of reincarnation and infinite universes, i.e., the “multiverse,” make no sense at all. Since each person is a projection of one unique “particle” of God’s infinite personality, each of us can relate to a unique part of God that corresponds only to us. That is very special indeed. If we are all destined to have an intense, mystical, personal relationship of love with God, living as God’s literal temple, it would not make sense for individuals to reincarnate with multiple identities or have an infinite number of identical “John Smiths,” each living in a different layer of a multiverse. Why would God do that? From the point of view of love, it is an unworkable premise. I address the issues of identity and reincarnation in more depth in the essay “The Beautiful Gifts of the Spirit World.”

Identity is important to God, and every human being personifies the reality that all of them are priceless and beloved children and partners of a God who is not only immense but also indwelling and personal.

And, most of all, omnipresent.

The Living Compass of Kindness and Compassionate Love: Essays on Love, Beauty, and the Mystical Path is available on Amazon.

© 2025 Peter Falkenberg Brown – All Rights Reserved

E-Mail Peter Falkenberg Brown: [email protected]

Website: https://peterfalkenbergbrown.com