While God is present everywhere, He cannot be found everywhere as the God of love and mercy. Instead, in the Divine Service, Jesus promises to be for us. He is not the abstract or hidden God! Jesus’s presence in the Divine Service is His saving presence in concrete means where He has promised to give us forgiveness and life. He serves us through means that He has appointed and received by us in faith. Word and Sacrament are together the treasures given by the risen Christ as He comes into the midst of His gathered church.

Catechesis is much more comprehensive than mere education. This life is lived by faith in Christ as we go about our daily tasks as husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, children, neighbors, and workers of every kind. Living the Christian faith is not merely an "internal thing"; it has authentic "external things" by which it is known and sustained. It is about a real faith that is fed and nurtured through preaching and sacraments in real places of worship. It is lived out in the real world where there is real sin and real sorrow, but real forgiveness and consolation through the Gospel of our dear Lord Jesus Christ. This is what catechesis is all about. All this and more is meant by the word of Jesus: “Make disciples of all nations; baptizing them ... teaching them ...; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.”

So, it is for those in the Church. We too have “a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence.” For, indeed, the Triune God has promised that “everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.” (Joel 2:32; Rom. 10:13). He who is Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier gives us His abiding care and protection through all the battles and storms of this life, and He promises to carry us in the ark of His Church into the safe harbor of heaven.