For much of my life, I have felt the compulsion, and the longing, to do stuff for God. But I have also struggled with the profound sense that what I do is not enough. Indeed, the Bible is filled with passages about fruitfulness, and good trees bearing good fruit. How am I to be a good tree? If a tree is known by its fruit then I better produce good fruit, but how do I to do that? And what kind of fruit is good fruit anyway? The only way I have been able to reconcile such thoughts is to do, and to do, and to do. To do something, anything, for God. But how do I know I am doing it for him? After all, what makes an action a God-centred action rather than just a me-centred action?
Continue reading “Fruitfulness? Significance? Where do I set my sights?”The hope of the practice of the presence of God
For as long as I can remember the most fundamental thing I’ve known about reality is that there is an all-powerful, all-loving God who is attentive to us and present in all. This is the bedrock truth influencing and overshadowing everything else.
But, for me, this awareness about God has been partnered with an enduring frustration. Why can’t I retain awareness of God and God’s presence as I live through my life each day? If God holds this prime position in reality, then shouldn’t this colour everything? Yet, much of the time, how I experience the world – what draws and retains my attention, where my thoughts dwell, how my feelings are influenced, the sensations in my body – seems disconnected from that fundamental truth.
Continue reading “The hope of the practice of the presence of God”