All too often I find it easier to read about prayer than to pray.  To talk about God than to talk to God.  To think about Scripture rather than consume the Bread of Life.  I will sit down for hours lost in a good story, but find my mind rushing about from distraction to distraction after 15 minutes in the Bible.  

I don’t want to be someone who knows about God.  I want to know God, and in the knowing, be made whole.

“I have often wondered why there is such an immense resistance in us to be with God.  Why do we find prayers so hard, why do we always prefer to be busy instead of praying?  Why do we keep seeing movies, going to parties, reading worthless books, running from one place to another?  If God really exists and loves us, if he only wants to show us his love, why then is it so hard to give ourselves to him?  Well, because when we enter into communion with God we have to face our demons, too.  We have to face our greed, anger, lust, our rebellious nature, and our deep resentments against God himself.  As long as we are busy and distracted we never really have to deal with who we are…

Precisely because our resistance is so great we need disciplines.  We need very concrete ways of living by which we can keep inner space open for God and grow into the new self.  But as we struggle with the demons we will discover that we are not struggling on our own but that it is the power of Christ himself who makes us victorious and it is that power that transforms us into new people.  Indeed God re-makes us.

That is paradise: the new life in God.

~ Henri Nouwen – “Desert Wisdom: Sayings from the Desert Fathers“

 

A professor once told me that faith is “giving all that you know of yourself to all that you know of God.”So this is where it begins. Facing who we are – who we really are. Not seeing myself as I want to be, but acknowledging the reality of my brokenness. And then, in full light of that, embracing communion with the One who loves, and knows, and is.

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Time to embrace the work, and dive into the boundless depths of Life.