The Presence

This may appear to be mere mental muscle-flexing or inconsequential time-wasting, but something has bugged me for years. Do you remember Brother Lawrence’s famous treatise “Practicing the Presence of God”? He was a resident in a monastery in the late 1800’s; working in the kitchen, he simply radiated godly cheer, whether chopping carrots or emptying swill. A modernized version appeared many decades later in which he was a hospital worker performing similar drudgery. The tale was convincing, influencing many to do the same, and points up the question “Can we really invoke God’s ‘presence’?” Think of the words we use as we ”summon” him in church worship services—fill us, come among us, make yourself known to us, et cetera. Is it reasonable to implore him in prayer to do these things? Must we “invite” him into our lives, our minds, our hearts?
If He is, as I was taught as a youth in confirmation class, and as I fervently believe, omnipresent [as well as omniscient and omnipotent], isn’t He already here? Isn’t it, rather, not a matter of issuing these invitations to persuade him to come to us, but really to remind ourselves that He’s been here all the while. It’s unlikely that He is a puppet doing our bidding, but rather our resident cosmic lover whose presence we need to acknowledge and enter into. It’s up to us to draw closer to him. The spiritual work is ours, not his—all the difference in the world!