Too Busy Not to Pray
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Mark M2 February 15, 2009
Title: Too Busy Not to Pray
Text: Mark 1:32-39
Big Idea: When we spend time in silent prayer before God, we can know we are the beloved and experience healing.
Back in the 1960s TIME magazine featured the opinion of an expert on time management.
This expert asserted that, because of the advances in technology that were happening in the 1960s, by the 1980s, people would have to radically cut back on how many hours per week they worked.
This expert claimed, “The great challenge is going to be what people will do with all their free time.”
How many of you would say, “I have so much time I don’t know what to do with it?”
How many of you would say, “I don’t have enough time.”
Contrary to what that expert on time management said in the 1960s—ironically many of our electronic time-saving devices have made us busier….
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, says that “we live in a state of ‘continuous partial attention.’” “Continuous partial attention” means that while you are answering your e-mail, and talking to someone, your cell phone rings and you have a conversation.” (use prop).
You are now involved in a continuous flow of interactions in which can only partially concentrate on each… we have many things demanding our attention.
Few people in the history of the world had as many demands on his attention as Jesus had during the years of his public ministry…
Last Sunday we began a new series in the Gospel of Mark, and we saw how when Jesus was about 30 years old, he was baptized in the Jordan River by his cousin, John the Baptist. We saw how heaven was torn open and a voice from heaven, God’s voice, said of Jesus, “You are my beloved Son, my priceless treasure. In you I am well pleased.”
We also looked at how Jesus was then filled with God’s Spirit and led into the wilderness for 40 days, where he was tested. After being tested in the wilderness, Jesus begins his public ministry.
A new door is being opened to God through Jesus Christ, and so Jesus Christ preaches, “Repent. Turn your lives around and enter this door. Enter into a life with God. The Kingdom of God has come.”
Jesus began to recruit disciples saying, “Come. Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.” Jesus then begins a teaching ministry at the local synagogue in Capernaum. At the synagogue he was approached by a man possessed by an evil spirit. Jesus delivered that man from the evil spirit. Jesus also healed Peter’s mother-in-law who had been in bed with a fever. When people heard about Jesus’ power over demons, over sickness, over nature, as you can imagine, everyone wanted to get an appointment with him. The whole town gathered at the door of Peter’s mother-in- law to see Jesus.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Mark 1: 32-39.
32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. 33 The whole town gathered at the door, 34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.
Jesus Prays in a Solitary Place
35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: "Everyone is looking for you!"
38 Jesus replied, "Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come." 39 So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
Word had gotten out that Jesus had this power to heal and deliver people, so we read in verse 33 that the whole town gathered at the door of Peter’s mother-in-law because they had heard Jesus was there. According to vs. 36, everyone wanted to see Jesus. This is an extremely busy time in Jesus’ ministry. His popularity has skyrocketed. Oprah and Mi-Jung Lee, Larry King and Peter Mansbridge want to interview him. Everyone wants his attention. Everyone wants to see him.
What happens to most of us when there are a lot of people or things demanding our attention? When new doors of opportunity are opening to us?
We get busier. We pray less.
What does Jesus do? In verse 35 we read that Jesus very early in the morning, when it was still dark, got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary, literally a quiet, lonely, place where he prayed.
For most of us, the busier we get, the less we pray, but Jesus was different. The busier he got, the more he prayed. Why was that? The busier Jesus got, the more he realized that he needed to remember who he was and whose he was.
He needed to remember the words of his baptism, where God says of him, “You are my beloved Son, my priceless treasure. In you I am well pleased.”
In the desert, Jesus had three temptations: to turn stones into bread--to rely on something other than God for his sustenance; to jump off the pinnacle of the temple and to have an angel swoop down and rescue him--to do something spectacular; to impress others and to be popular; to worship Satan in exchange for the Kingdoms of the world--to compromise his integrity in order to gain power and influence.
As Jesus is active in his public ministry, the same temptations no doubt present themselves to him—the temptation to put his security in something other than God, the temptation to be defined by what he does, by what people think of him, by his power and his influence.
By coming before God in prayer, Jesus once again is reminded that the core truth of his existence is that he is beloved by God his Father.
Now, we don’t know the exact content of what Jesus prayed in Mark 1, but we do know that every time Jesus prayed (except once—when he was on the cross), he would begin his conversation with God with the word, “Abba,” which is the most intimate, personal word that a person could use for God. It would be equivalent to our “Daddy,” “Papa”.
When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he said, “Begin your prayer with the word, ‘Abba.’”
The essence of prayer is to come before God recognizing we are in the presence of a strong, good, and loving father.
As we come to God in prayer we, of course, ask God to give us the daily things that we need. We pray for the forgiveness of sins, but, according to Jesus, it is not the beginning point of prayer. The beginning point of prayer is to the simple awareness that we are in the presence of our loving Father, our Abba.
When we are busy, the temptation that we face is to be defined by the things that we do, what people think of us, what we have, our influence. We can be swept away by this kind of powerful current…
As a high school student, a large part of my feelings of self-worth depended on how well I did or did not do in sports (that now has shifted to work for me).
Is there something in your life that powerfully shapes how you feel about yourself?
If you’re a student, you can be tempted to define yourself by your grades.
If you’re pursuing a career, you can be tempted to define yourself by how well you’re doing in your work.
If you’re a mom, you can be tempted to define yourself by how your kids turn out.
There is nothing wrong with accomplishment, but the problem is when we begin to define our worth by what we do, or have, or by what others think of us.
Spending time in prayer and solitude before God is like the string on a kite. It can keep us from having our identity completely blown away by either success or failure… it helps us define ourselves by something other than success or failure… it helps know that our core truth of who we are is that we are beloved.
Henri Nouwen in Beloved says that the real work of prayer is listening to the voice who calls you the beloved. It is being alone with the one who says you are my beloved. I want to be with you. Don’t go running around trying to prove to everybody that you are beloved. You are already beloved.
Thomas Merton pointed out, “In prayer we discover what we already have… Everything has been given to us in Christ. All we need is to experience what we already possess.”
Spending time with God in prayer can slow us down enough to hear the voice that calls us the beloved.
But, practically, how do we actually come before God so that we can hear the voice that calls us the beloved? When we pray, we tend to talk and not listen, so how do we come before God in a way that enables us to listen? We come before God in silence.
But this is hard to do. If you have ever tried to spend time in silence before God, you are aware of how hard that can be. Even spending 5 or 10 minutes in real silence before God can be challenging.
(take a moment for silence).
Here are some approaches I’ve used.
When we spend time in silent pray before God, all the things that we feel we ought to be doing come to mind... Henri Nouwen once said that when we pray the thoughts jump around in our minds like monkeys jumping around banana trees.
One of the things that can help to still our mind is to place ourself in a posture of physical stillness. Physical stillness can facilitate interior stillness (use prop chair).
What I typically do is sit on the front portion of a chair (I don’t lean back), take a few, deep, slow breaths and seek to centre myself. I am quite restless and my mind tends to wander.
One of the things that helps me most to come quietly into the presence of God is to repeat a simple sacred word. For me, it is the word, “Wait.” Others have used a sacred word like “Jesus,” “love,” “trust,” “mercy,” “peace.” Some like to use just a brief phrase, a brief prayer like the ancient Jesus prayer—“Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Or, more briefly, “Jesus, have mercy on me.” If you will repeat this Jesus prayer slowly as a way of focusing the mind, it will still the mind and set your heart on Jesus.
If your mind tends to wander in prayer, the advice of the contemplatives is to give your mind something simple to do by using a prayer word or phrase. At first, this practice may seem wooden, but in time the use of prayer word “Jesus” “trust” “mercy” can become a natural part of who we are and how we pray.
(Pause for prayer)
Another way to keep our minds from wandering is to memorize a passage of Scripture and to repeat it slowly in our minds. As part of my solitude these days, I like to do a very gentle, contemplative jog early in the morning between 5 and 6. I will recite slowly 1 Corinthians 13. It is a wonderful reminder of God’s love and his call for us to love as he loves—love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast.
My wife Sakiko loves to journal. With a new baby she does not have time to write long journal entries, but journaling helps her recollect the joy and the gifts of everyday life, to experience gratitude and God in the ordinary. Journaling can help focus our mind (prop)
If I’m reading a book like Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen and something really strikes me, I may journal about it and from time to time go back to it (prop).
Something else we can do to focus on God’s love for us is to be mindful of the analogs of God’s love for us in daily life. For example, you may have an especially-loving parent or grandparent who becomes an analog of God’s love for you. I am blessed to have parents whose love for me and my siblings is a picture of God’s love for us. Or, if you are married, perhaps the love you experience with your spouse is an analog of God’s love for you.
A couple of years ago I was on the east coast to do some speaking. I had the opportunity to spend a little time with my younger sister’s family in Montreal. My brother-in-law came to pick me up at the airport. We arrived at their home, right when my younger sister was arriving home with her 5-year-old daughter Juliana. When Juliana got out of the car, she ran around the back end with her short little legs, shouting, “Uncle Ken! Uncle Ken!” She came and gave me a hug and said, “I haven’t been able to sleep because I have been so excited about your coming.” To me, that was a picture of God’s love for me—his eagerness to know me.
Last Sunday I talked about how as a new father I am taken aback by the sense of the love that I have for our 7-month-old son, independent of anything that he has done or accomplished. He comes as an analog of God’s love for me.
(Part of the reason why it is so important to experience life in community is because it is often through people that we experience most fully and completely the love of God.)
What are the things that cause you to feel God’s love for you?
Meditate on it.
When we come before God in silence and solitude, sometimes what we hear and sense is not God’s love for us, but some pain that we have experienced. Blaise Pascal, the scientist and Christian philosopher, observed in Pensees that “all of the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact—that they cannot stay quietly alone in a room.” Pascal said that the reason that human beings cannot sit alone in a room is because when we sit alone in a room and something disturbing or painful arises in our consciousness, we have nothing that can bring us comfort, so we don’t want to think about it too deeply. So we try to manage our lives through what Pascal calls diversion. We require lots of activity and excitement to distract ourselves. In solitude and in silence it is true that disturbing and painful things can arise in our hearts, but that can also be an occasion to turn to God and receive his love.
Last month I came across this story of a man who wanted to be strong for his wife, to be able to initiate without fear, to be able to give his whole heart to her. But he grew uncertain with her, hesitant, made him fearful. As he spent time thinking about it, he realized that there were parts of his heart he had lost or left behind with other girlfriends that had broken up with him, and that he needed to get his heart back. He described being on a trip where this pain surfaced again. He felt so vulnerable to the beautiful women he met on that trip. It was not primarily for sex, but a vulnerable yearning for some broken place in his heart that was crying out for medication. In his journal, this man named John wrote this: “O merciful God, come to me in this place, this very place in my heart. I give this to you. I choose you over Eve. I choose your love and friendship and beauty. I give my aching and longing and vulnerable heart to you. Come and heal me here. Sanctify me. Make me whole and holy in this very place.” John said, “I prayed it over and over day and night—whole and holy.”
If, in our times of solitude, pain arises in our heart, we can give that hurt place to God and invite him to bring healing and holiness. Martin Laird, in his extraordinary book on contemplation, Into the Silent Land, describes a woman who had some very real pain from her childhood. One day her mother walked into her bedroom as she sat looking at herself in the mirror. Her mother said to her, “I hope you don’t think you are beautiful.” She was in fact beautiful in every season of her life—as a young girl, as an adolescent, a young adult, a mature woman. She was beautiful, but she believed she was ugly. When she was a teen-ager, she won a highly-prized scholarship to study ballet, but her mother said, “Why would they give you that? Everybody knows you have got two left feet.” So although she danced to great acclaim all over the world, she believed that she was a klutz with two left feet. All this plays over and over again in her head. Even if she is not conscious of it, the video plays again in the background like dark music.
But she did find solace. She took long walks out on the Yorkshire moors. If she walked long enough, her mind would begin to settle. The expanse of scented heather was scented balm that soothed the throbbing anger and fear and pain. She described how on one occasion her anxiety began to drop like layers of scarves. Suddenly she was aware of being immersed in a sacred presence that upheld her in everything. And while this experience out on the moors happened only once, it proved to be a real turning point in her life. It drew her into the way of prayer.
In prayer and solitude before God, we can experience God’s healing and God’s love as we offer those things to God.
After Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist was brutally beheaded because of his proclamation of God’s word, Jesus withdrew to a solitary place to be with God.
Before facing his own death, Jesus withdrew to pray, saying “Abba”. Our pain and our anxiety can be occasions for us to come before God in silence and solitude and experience his love and healing.
As we spend time in the presence of our Abba Father, and realize how deeply we are loved by him, we will be healed of our pain and the broken places in our heart. We will also be healed of our compulsions and the temptations to define our lives by what we do, by what we have, what others think of us, and our influence.
And when that happens, we will become more content, more at peace as we become more conscious of the treasures that God has given us and the treasure that we are in his sight.
While Jesus is praying, his disciples come to him and they say, “Everyone is looking for you!” And we read how Jesus leaves that place and preaches the good news that people can enter into a relationship with him, and we see him offer healing to a leper, a complete social outcast. We see Jesus love others, set people free. As we understand how loved we are and that our lives are not defined by what we do or what others think of us, then ironically we are freed to become an instrument of healing in the world.
Thomas Merton said that the purpose of life is not to try to get out of life as much as we can, but to recollect ourselves so they can give ourselves away.
While it is important to know what are our unique talents as we serve, many have said “is not so much what we can do, but who we are” that will be the most enduring gift we offer others.
The most profound contribution that we will make to the world will be not what we do, but who we are.
It is wonderful when we can do something for a neighbor—to loan them some tools, to offer counsel to a friend or a colleague, to help a kid with homework, to bring healing to a patient, to serve a meal for a homeless person.
But as Henri Nouwen rightly says there is a greater gift than all of this. It is the gift of our own life that shines through all that we do—to offer our joy, our inner peace, a sense of well-being that comes from being with the Father.
Stu Gardner did many things. As a teacher he taught, he wrote, he was active as a board member and member of the choir and prayer team here, but his greatest gift was the gift of who he was--his passion for God, vulnerability, joy and compassion, and it was who he was, more than what he did, that has blessed us most.
It is as we spend time in silence and solitude before the Father, we become the kind of people who, like Stu, are able to offer who we are to the world.
So, spending time in prayer and solitude before God is not an end, in and of itself. We hear the voice of the beloved. We experience healing. Out of these gifts we become people who, in turn like Jesus, can bring life, peace and healing to the world.
Mark M2 February 15, 2009
Title: Too Busy Not to Pray
Text: Mark 1:32-39
Big Idea: When we spend time in silent prayer before God, we can know we are the beloved and experience healing.
Back in the 1960s TIME magazine featured the opinion of an expert on time management.
This expert asserted that, because of the advances in technology that were happening in the 1960s, by the 1980s, people would have to radically cut back on how many hours per week they worked.
This expert claimed, “The great challenge is going to be what people will do with all their free time.”
How many of you would say, “I have so much time I don’t know what to do with it?”
How many of you would say, “I don’t have enough time.”
Contrary to what that expert on time management said in the 1960s—ironically many of our electronic time-saving devices have made us busier….
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, says that “we live in a state of ‘continuous partial attention.’” “Continuous partial attention” means that while you are answering your e-mail, and talking to someone, your cell phone rings and you have a conversation.” (use prop).
You are now involved in a continuous flow of interactions in which can only partially concentrate on each… we have many things demanding our attention.
Few people in the history of the world had as many demands on his attention as Jesus had during the years of his public ministry…
Last Sunday we began a new series in the Gospel of Mark, and we saw how when Jesus was about 30 years old, he was baptized in the Jordan River by his cousin, John the Baptist. We saw how heaven was torn open and a voice from heaven, God’s voice, said of Jesus, “You are my beloved Son, my priceless treasure. In you I am well pleased.”
We also looked at how Jesus was then filled with God’s Spirit and led into the wilderness for 40 days, where he was tested. After being tested in the wilderness, Jesus begins his public ministry.
A new door is being opened to God through Jesus Christ, and so Jesus Christ preaches, “Repent. Turn your lives around and enter this door. Enter into a life with God. The Kingdom of God has come.”
Jesus began to recruit disciples saying, “Come. Follow me and I will make you fishers of people.” Jesus then begins a teaching ministry at the local synagogue in Capernaum. At the synagogue he was approached by a man possessed by an evil spirit. Jesus delivered that man from the evil spirit. Jesus also healed Peter’s mother-in-law who had been in bed with a fever. When people heard about Jesus’ power over demons, over sickness, over nature, as you can imagine, everyone wanted to get an appointment with him. The whole town gathered at the door of Peter’s mother-in- law to see Jesus.
If you have your Bibles, please turn to Mark 1: 32-39.
32 That evening after sunset the people brought to Jesus all the sick and demon-possessed. 33 The whole town gathered at the door, 34 and Jesus healed many who had various diseases. He also drove out many demons, but he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.
Jesus Prays in a Solitary Place
35 Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. 36 Simon and his companions went to look for him, 37 and when they found him, they exclaimed: "Everyone is looking for you!"
38 Jesus replied, "Let us go somewhere else—to the nearby villages—so I can preach there also. That is why I have come." 39 So he traveled throughout Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and driving out demons.
Word had gotten out that Jesus had this power to heal and deliver people, so we read in verse 33 that the whole town gathered at the door of Peter’s mother-in-law because they had heard Jesus was there. According to vs. 36, everyone wanted to see Jesus. This is an extremely busy time in Jesus’ ministry. His popularity has skyrocketed. Oprah and Mi-Jung Lee, Larry King and Peter Mansbridge want to interview him. Everyone wants his attention. Everyone wants to see him.
What happens to most of us when there are a lot of people or things demanding our attention? When new doors of opportunity are opening to us?
We get busier. We pray less.
What does Jesus do? In verse 35 we read that Jesus very early in the morning, when it was still dark, got up, left the house, and went off to a solitary, literally a quiet, lonely, place where he prayed.
For most of us, the busier we get, the less we pray, but Jesus was different. The busier he got, the more he prayed. Why was that? The busier Jesus got, the more he realized that he needed to remember who he was and whose he was.
He needed to remember the words of his baptism, where God says of him, “You are my beloved Son, my priceless treasure. In you I am well pleased.”
In the desert, Jesus had three temptations: to turn stones into bread--to rely on something other than God for his sustenance; to jump off the pinnacle of the temple and to have an angel swoop down and rescue him--to do something spectacular; to impress others and to be popular; to worship Satan in exchange for the Kingdoms of the world--to compromise his integrity in order to gain power and influence.
As Jesus is active in his public ministry, the same temptations no doubt present themselves to him—the temptation to put his security in something other than God, the temptation to be defined by what he does, by what people think of him, by his power and his influence.
By coming before God in prayer, Jesus once again is reminded that the core truth of his existence is that he is beloved by God his Father.
Now, we don’t know the exact content of what Jesus prayed in Mark 1, but we do know that every time Jesus prayed (except once—when he was on the cross), he would begin his conversation with God with the word, “Abba,” which is the most intimate, personal word that a person could use for God. It would be equivalent to our “Daddy,” “Papa”.
When Jesus taught his disciples to pray, he said, “Begin your prayer with the word, ‘Abba.’”
The essence of prayer is to come before God recognizing we are in the presence of a strong, good, and loving father.
As we come to God in prayer we, of course, ask God to give us the daily things that we need. We pray for the forgiveness of sins, but, according to Jesus, it is not the beginning point of prayer. The beginning point of prayer is to the simple awareness that we are in the presence of our loving Father, our Abba.
When we are busy, the temptation that we face is to be defined by the things that we do, what people think of us, what we have, our influence. We can be swept away by this kind of powerful current…
As a high school student, a large part of my feelings of self-worth depended on how well I did or did not do in sports (that now has shifted to work for me).
Is there something in your life that powerfully shapes how you feel about yourself?
If you’re a student, you can be tempted to define yourself by your grades.
If you’re pursuing a career, you can be tempted to define yourself by how well you’re doing in your work.
If you’re a mom, you can be tempted to define yourself by how your kids turn out.
There is nothing wrong with accomplishment, but the problem is when we begin to define our worth by what we do, or have, or by what others think of us.
Spending time in prayer and solitude before God is like the string on a kite. It can keep us from having our identity completely blown away by either success or failure… it helps us define ourselves by something other than success or failure… it helps know that our core truth of who we are is that we are beloved.
Henri Nouwen in Beloved says that the real work of prayer is listening to the voice who calls you the beloved. It is being alone with the one who says you are my beloved. I want to be with you. Don’t go running around trying to prove to everybody that you are beloved. You are already beloved.
Thomas Merton pointed out, “In prayer we discover what we already have… Everything has been given to us in Christ. All we need is to experience what we already possess.”
Spending time with God in prayer can slow us down enough to hear the voice that calls us the beloved.
But, practically, how do we actually come before God so that we can hear the voice that calls us the beloved? When we pray, we tend to talk and not listen, so how do we come before God in a way that enables us to listen? We come before God in silence.
But this is hard to do. If you have ever tried to spend time in silence before God, you are aware of how hard that can be. Even spending 5 or 10 minutes in real silence before God can be challenging.
(take a moment for silence).
Here are some approaches I’ve used.
When we spend time in silent pray before God, all the things that we feel we ought to be doing come to mind... Henri Nouwen once said that when we pray the thoughts jump around in our minds like monkeys jumping around banana trees.
One of the things that can help to still our mind is to place ourself in a posture of physical stillness. Physical stillness can facilitate interior stillness (use prop chair).
What I typically do is sit on the front portion of a chair (I don’t lean back), take a few, deep, slow breaths and seek to centre myself. I am quite restless and my mind tends to wander.
One of the things that helps me most to come quietly into the presence of God is to repeat a simple sacred word. For me, it is the word, “Wait.” Others have used a sacred word like “Jesus,” “love,” “trust,” “mercy,” “peace.” Some like to use just a brief phrase, a brief prayer like the ancient Jesus prayer—“Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Or, more briefly, “Jesus, have mercy on me.” If you will repeat this Jesus prayer slowly as a way of focusing the mind, it will still the mind and set your heart on Jesus.
If your mind tends to wander in prayer, the advice of the contemplatives is to give your mind something simple to do by using a prayer word or phrase. At first, this practice may seem wooden, but in time the use of prayer word “Jesus” “trust” “mercy” can become a natural part of who we are and how we pray.
(Pause for prayer)
Another way to keep our minds from wandering is to memorize a passage of Scripture and to repeat it slowly in our minds. As part of my solitude these days, I like to do a very gentle, contemplative jog early in the morning between 5 and 6. I will recite slowly 1 Corinthians 13. It is a wonderful reminder of God’s love and his call for us to love as he loves—love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast.
My wife Sakiko loves to journal. With a new baby she does not have time to write long journal entries, but journaling helps her recollect the joy and the gifts of everyday life, to experience gratitude and God in the ordinary. Journaling can help focus our mind (prop)
If I’m reading a book like Life of the Beloved by Henri Nouwen and something really strikes me, I may journal about it and from time to time go back to it (prop).
Something else we can do to focus on God’s love for us is to be mindful of the analogs of God’s love for us in daily life. For example, you may have an especially-loving parent or grandparent who becomes an analog of God’s love for you. I am blessed to have parents whose love for me and my siblings is a picture of God’s love for us. Or, if you are married, perhaps the love you experience with your spouse is an analog of God’s love for you.
A couple of years ago I was on the east coast to do some speaking. I had the opportunity to spend a little time with my younger sister’s family in Montreal. My brother-in-law came to pick me up at the airport. We arrived at their home, right when my younger sister was arriving home with her 5-year-old daughter Juliana. When Juliana got out of the car, she ran around the back end with her short little legs, shouting, “Uncle Ken! Uncle Ken!” She came and gave me a hug and said, “I haven’t been able to sleep because I have been so excited about your coming.” To me, that was a picture of God’s love for me—his eagerness to know me.
Last Sunday I talked about how as a new father I am taken aback by the sense of the love that I have for our 7-month-old son, independent of anything that he has done or accomplished. He comes as an analog of God’s love for me.
(Part of the reason why it is so important to experience life in community is because it is often through people that we experience most fully and completely the love of God.)
What are the things that cause you to feel God’s love for you?
Meditate on it.
When we come before God in silence and solitude, sometimes what we hear and sense is not God’s love for us, but some pain that we have experienced. Blaise Pascal, the scientist and Christian philosopher, observed in Pensees that “all of the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact—that they cannot stay quietly alone in a room.” Pascal said that the reason that human beings cannot sit alone in a room is because when we sit alone in a room and something disturbing or painful arises in our consciousness, we have nothing that can bring us comfort, so we don’t want to think about it too deeply. So we try to manage our lives through what Pascal calls diversion. We require lots of activity and excitement to distract ourselves. In solitude and in silence it is true that disturbing and painful things can arise in our hearts, but that can also be an occasion to turn to God and receive his love.
Last month I came across this story of a man who wanted to be strong for his wife, to be able to initiate without fear, to be able to give his whole heart to her. But he grew uncertain with her, hesitant, made him fearful. As he spent time thinking about it, he realized that there were parts of his heart he had lost or left behind with other girlfriends that had broken up with him, and that he needed to get his heart back. He described being on a trip where this pain surfaced again. He felt so vulnerable to the beautiful women he met on that trip. It was not primarily for sex, but a vulnerable yearning for some broken place in his heart that was crying out for medication. In his journal, this man named John wrote this: “O merciful God, come to me in this place, this very place in my heart. I give this to you. I choose you over Eve. I choose your love and friendship and beauty. I give my aching and longing and vulnerable heart to you. Come and heal me here. Sanctify me. Make me whole and holy in this very place.” John said, “I prayed it over and over day and night—whole and holy.”
If, in our times of solitude, pain arises in our heart, we can give that hurt place to God and invite him to bring healing and holiness. Martin Laird, in his extraordinary book on contemplation, Into the Silent Land, describes a woman who had some very real pain from her childhood. One day her mother walked into her bedroom as she sat looking at herself in the mirror. Her mother said to her, “I hope you don’t think you are beautiful.” She was in fact beautiful in every season of her life—as a young girl, as an adolescent, a young adult, a mature woman. She was beautiful, but she believed she was ugly. When she was a teen-ager, she won a highly-prized scholarship to study ballet, but her mother said, “Why would they give you that? Everybody knows you have got two left feet.” So although she danced to great acclaim all over the world, she believed that she was a klutz with two left feet. All this plays over and over again in her head. Even if she is not conscious of it, the video plays again in the background like dark music.
But she did find solace. She took long walks out on the Yorkshire moors. If she walked long enough, her mind would begin to settle. The expanse of scented heather was scented balm that soothed the throbbing anger and fear and pain. She described how on one occasion her anxiety began to drop like layers of scarves. Suddenly she was aware of being immersed in a sacred presence that upheld her in everything. And while this experience out on the moors happened only once, it proved to be a real turning point in her life. It drew her into the way of prayer.
In prayer and solitude before God, we can experience God’s healing and God’s love as we offer those things to God.
After Jesus’ cousin John the Baptist was brutally beheaded because of his proclamation of God’s word, Jesus withdrew to a solitary place to be with God.
Before facing his own death, Jesus withdrew to pray, saying “Abba”. Our pain and our anxiety can be occasions for us to come before God in silence and solitude and experience his love and healing.
As we spend time in the presence of our Abba Father, and realize how deeply we are loved by him, we will be healed of our pain and the broken places in our heart. We will also be healed of our compulsions and the temptations to define our lives by what we do, by what we have, what others think of us, and our influence.
And when that happens, we will become more content, more at peace as we become more conscious of the treasures that God has given us and the treasure that we are in his sight.
While Jesus is praying, his disciples come to him and they say, “Everyone is looking for you!” And we read how Jesus leaves that place and preaches the good news that people can enter into a relationship with him, and we see him offer healing to a leper, a complete social outcast. We see Jesus love others, set people free. As we understand how loved we are and that our lives are not defined by what we do or what others think of us, then ironically we are freed to become an instrument of healing in the world.
Thomas Merton said that the purpose of life is not to try to get out of life as much as we can, but to recollect ourselves so they can give ourselves away.
While it is important to know what are our unique talents as we serve, many have said “is not so much what we can do, but who we are” that will be the most enduring gift we offer others.
The most profound contribution that we will make to the world will be not what we do, but who we are.
It is wonderful when we can do something for a neighbor—to loan them some tools, to offer counsel to a friend or a colleague, to help a kid with homework, to bring healing to a patient, to serve a meal for a homeless person.
But as Henri Nouwen rightly says there is a greater gift than all of this. It is the gift of our own life that shines through all that we do—to offer our joy, our inner peace, a sense of well-being that comes from being with the Father.
Stu Gardner did many things. As a teacher he taught, he wrote, he was active as a board member and member of the choir and prayer team here, but his greatest gift was the gift of who he was--his passion for God, vulnerability, joy and compassion, and it was who he was, more than what he did, that has blessed us most.
It is as we spend time in silence and solitude before the Father, we become the kind of people who, like Stu, are able to offer who we are to the world.
So, spending time in prayer and solitude before God is not an end, in and of itself. We hear the voice of the beloved. We experience healing. Out of these gifts we become people who, in turn like Jesus, can bring life, peace and healing to the world.
posted by Shigematsu at 10:16 AM
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