Entering Into the Presence of God -- 2

In Him we live and move and have our very being -- God is present to us at every moment.  But we are not always present to Him.  The goal of our prayer is to bring ourselves-- heart, mind, soul, and body-- into the very Presence of God, to hear His Voice, to experience His Love for us, to receive His Wisdom, His Guidance, His Truth into our very being.  How far away is that experience from simply reciting our prayers!

The very desire to pray is His invitation to us:  Come and See!  Come and Experience!  Come and Taste the goodness of the Lord!  Unless the Holy Spirit had been calling us, we would have no desire to enter into His Presence.  But if we desire it, it is only because He has willed to fulfill our desire.  C. S. Lewis tells us that our desires are keys to our destiny.  One does not desire water, except that our bodies were designed to be nourished and sustained by water.  We are designed to "run on" water, so to speak.  The same is true of hunger, sex, and our other natural desires.  Pope John II published his reflections on The Theology of the Body, saying that our bodily desires for union with another are an indication of our desire to be united ultimately with God Himself.

So if we desire to pray, we know that God wants to answer that desire, and that He will answer the deepest longings our hearts.  The question is, "How, with all the demands and distractions of our lives pulling at us, how do we enter into the Presence of the Almighty?"  I have come to believe from observing life, that if we want something to happen, we must create the space for that activity.  For years, I wanted to paint, but not enough to find the time and space to paint.  Real artists first set up their "space," and they set up that space with all the equipment they need to paint -- canvas, easel, brushes, etc.  Then, when they find or make the time to paint, they go to their space, and the magic begins to happen.  Without that space, the desire to paint soon withers.  Other things take precedence in life. 

So if we really desire to pray, we must first create a space to pray.  A certain chair will do the trick, preferably one close to a window.  Having a bible close at hand, or at least some kind of spiritual reading, is part of the equipment we need to help us listen to the guidance of the Spirit.  Once we establish a place to pray, prayer becomes easier for us; in fact, the physical setup alone begins to trigger prayer in us -- and the more we practice prayer in that place, the more our hearts, minds, and bodies associate the physical setup with prayer, the more natural it becomes for us.

But Time to pray is another part of the equation.  Mothers with infants and small children cannot plan their time, no matter how much they desire to pray.  That chair may become the place to hold and nurse a baby, to read to a toddler, to hug and talk to a small child.  All of these are forms of prayer, of God's love being poured out into the world that so desperately needs it.  But the exhausted mother may still desperately need a time to pray, or to receive within herself a renewal of the love she constantly gives to others.

When I was in that situation, having 3 children in 5 years, I found that I was adrift spiritually.  Physically, I was exhausted, since my children did not sleep at night.  I nursed all my children, so it seemed that I was up every hour and a half, either to feed a baby or to take care of a child with an earache, strep throat, tonsillitis, etc.  I recall one day that seems to sum up my life at the time:  the oldest child (5) was vomiting on the sofa; the middle child (3), in the midst of potty-training, was crying because she needed to go potty, and the youngest ( a few months old) was screaming with hunger.  No matter which direction I headed first, it was the wrong direction.  All my life, the two resources I had depended on for health and strength had been sleep and prayer -- and now I had neither.  I had no coping strategies to deal with my life at the time, and I did not know how to solve the problem.  If I got up early to pray, a baby woke up too and needed attention.  I knew I "should" be able to be a loving mother, giving all my children exactly what they needed when they needed it -- and that only added to my guilt and frustration.  I felt helpless and angry at my obvious inadequacy to cope with life.

Finally, I struck a "bargain" with God:  if you will only give me time to pray, I promise I'll take it, instead of rushing around trying to get something done.  Within a week of my promise, my neighbor across the street began to ask if she could take the children with her to the bank, to the grocery, to the post office -- whenever she would be out for just 20 or 30 minutes.  Now who does this?  I figured it had to be an answer to my prayer.  Whenever she took the children with her, I would run to my "prayer chair" and collapse into the arms of God for however long I had free.  That time began to steady and calm me, even if I said nothing that could have been construed as "prayer" during that time.  What it did was to convince me that God was present to me, even if I could not always be present to Him.  It built my faith that He was the Senior Partner in the enterprise of my life, and I began to trust Him a little more. 

More about prayer later.