Things can change for you. Each day can have a different, more meaningful look. You can become more aware of God’s incarnational winks and nods, smiles and touches, of his directing and cautioning hand upon you. Life can become more about His reaching out through the wonders and mysteries of the world to expand what you may see and hear, sense and know, about Him and you. And prayer will become more often your orientation and disposition, your accommodating medium of relationship with Him and His creation.
You may feel called to compassionate, petitioning prayer, grateful, praising and worshiping prayer, but also prayerful meditation on God’s teaching and truth for you. You may even spend time with the Ignatian Exercises. In time, perhaps, comes walking-around prayer, listening-and-watching prayer, loving-and-being-loved prayer. Prayer then becomes more selfless attention to God and others. And the inept, insecure attempts at denial of self may be replaced with a more natural sense of identity with God’s Spirit, His creation, His invitations, and His love. You may also come into a more intimate place with God where you are more captive to His indwelling presence, and more often His peace, as He quietly continues to change who you are in Him.
And you can find your way there with Jesus. To that end, if you spend time prayerfully meditating on what he said and did, if you allow Him to draw close to you, His Spirit to reside in you and speak to you, His nature to rest on you, then it is more natural, more instinctive, it seems, to love God and love and forgive others, to show patience, compassion and humility, to see all people as brothers and neighbors.
First written: November 2006 - January 2007
© Gregory E. Hudson 2007
