Tuesday, March 10, 2009

The Pain of Loving

Every time we make the decision to love someone, we open ourselves to great suffering, because those we most love cause us not only great joy but also great pain. The greatest pain comes from leaving. When the child leaves home, when the husband or wife leaves for a long period of time or for good, when the beloved friend departs to another country or dies ... the pain of the leaving can tear us apart.
Still, if we want to avoid the suffering of leaving, we will never experience the joy of loving. And love is stronger than fear, life stronger than death, hope stronger than despair. We have to trust that the risk of loving is always worth taking.

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Reflections on Psalm 139 pt.2 (God accompanies us everywhere)

While the first six verses of this Psalm focuses on: God Knows All About Me, the second set of six verses focuses on: God Accompanies Us Everywhere. Not only does He know us intimately, but is is present no matter where we happen to be. Listen to how David puts it.
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
If I say, "Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
John Ortberg talks about this guy by the name of Nicholas Herman who worked in the food industry as a short order cook and bottle-washer. He became deeply dissatisfied with his life; he worried chronically about himself, even whether or not he was a Christian.
One day Nick was looking at a tree, and it struck him, the secret of the life of a tree is that it remains rooted in something other and deeper than itself. He decided to make his life an experiment in what he called a “habitual, silent, secret conversation of the soul with God.”
He is known today by the new name given to him by his friends: Brother Lawrence. He remained obscure throughout his life. He never got voted pope. He never got close to becoming the CEO of his organization. He stayed in the kitchen. But the people around him found that rivers of living water flowed out of him that made them want to know God the way he did. They said about him, “The good brother found God everywhere.” One of them wrote, he found God “as much as while he was repairing shoes as while he was praying with the community.”
After Lawrence died, his friends put together a book of his letters and conversations. It is called Practicing the Presence of God and is thought, apart from the Bible, to be the most widely read book of the last four centuries. This monastic short-order cook has probably out-sold novelist John Grisham and Tom Clancy and J.K. Rowling put together.
Hildebert of Lavardin who lived in the 11th century wrote, “God is over all things, under all things, outside all; within but not enclosed; without but not excluded; above but not raised up; below but not depressed; wholly above, presiding, wholly beneath, sustaining; wholly without, embracing, wholly within filling.”
So because God is present no matter where we are, when I am lonely, God is my companion, when I’m feeling inadequate, God is my confidence. When I’m tempted, God is my counselor and when I’m discouraged, God is my comforter, if I learn to be more attentive to His presence.
There are many ways to be more attentive to His presence, one is to simply be still and know He is God by taking times in silence and solitude. Blasé Pascal said, most of man’s problems come from his inability to sit still. So take some time just to be quit, to sit in silence.
This practice involves meeting God in the events of life. St. Ignatius had a five step process that one author broke down into just three simple steps: Stop, look and listen.
STOP
Stopping is simply taking the time to slow down. We all often go as such a fast past and I think we just need to take a deep breath, and sit before God. Just steep ourselves in God reality. Sometimes simply breathing helps. But to stop is simple to put ourselves before God, remove ourselves from any distractions.
LOOK
Then we want to look. We want to take a look at the last week or the last twenty-four hours. Look at God’s initiative, his provisions. We often miss what God is doing. C.S. Lewis says, God is often incognito. So you take some time to look at what God is doing around you.
LISTEN
After taking a five minutes or so to look at your life, and examine what God is doing, I start listen. I try to sense what the Spirit has to say to me. Sometimes I feel a slight nudging of the Spirit, other times I feel as if the Spirit brings a verse or passage to my mind, sometimes it is something strong. But after taking a period of time where I stop, and then look at my life, I take some time to listen. Stop, Look and Listen.
This is an extremely rich resource for spending time with God and enabling us discern His presence in our daily experience. As one person has stated, “Life keeps happening. Changing situations – some desirable and others definitely less so – provide important opportunities to better know both God and our self. Each gives us a chance to examine where God is in that experience and what gifts God is offering for our growth.
What this exercise helps me to is to meet God in the concrete circumstances of life. I like how Paul Stevens puts it, “If God has come in the flesh, and if God keeps coming to us in our fleshly existence, then all of life is shot through with meaning. Earth is crammed with heaven. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is lost. Nothing secular. Nothing absurd… All are grist for the mill of a down-to-earth spirituality.
You see, the omnipresent God whose name is Immanuel is not distant but nearer to us than we can imagine. God is not alien to the circumstances of our lives, but comes to us in them. Our challenge is to unmask the Divine in the natural and name the presence of God in our lives.