Omnipresence

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God is always with me, God is everywhere, God is within me, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent, psalm 139, psalm 19, psalm 8, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Your hand shall guide me

As I recently mentioned, Psalm 139 is one of my top three favorite psalms (with #8 and 19). This morning it got me to musing how my image of all those qualities of God that I learned in elementary school – like omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent – have shifted for me as I have grown older. It’s not that their meanings have changed; God is still everywhere, for example, but as my image of God has changed, the effect of these words has become radically different for me. Growing up, we were taught that God is everywhere, able to see everything we do. Had I been reading the psalms in those days, I might have been in a state of high anxiety to hear the psalmist say, “If I go up to the heavens you are there; if I sink to the nether world you are present there” if I felt that I had not measured up in my behavior. I can imagine trying to find a closet or a dark corner in the barn at the end of our street in which to hide in an effort to avoid God’s disappointment in me. Believing now that God is always and everywhere with me, not to mention within me, rejoicing in our relationship, never causes me to want to hide. Fidelity on both our parts allows me to look in the mirror of God’s presence even on my worst days and find comfort there because I trust that God loves me as I am and wants me to move always toward loving myself that way as well.

Today, then, I offer the reassurance contained in some of the early lines of Psalm 139 as sustenance for the day. Rain or shine, dark or light, success or failure, God will be there. If I take the wings of the dawn, if I settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there Your hand shall guide me and your right hand hold me fast…

The Mind of Christ

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Christ, God is everywhere, joy, kenosis, Paul, Philippians, saint, sanctity, self-emptying, The Sophia Center for Spirituality, Thomas Merton

As I reflect on the Scriptures here and elsewhere I’ve often come around to the theme of kenosis, (self-emptying), because it seems to me that filling up with God necessitates this action in our lives. I do not speak of beating ego out of ourselves to achieve sainthood. That flies in the face of half of the Great Commandment, the part that tells us to love our neighbor as ourselves. But this morning we have the text again in which Paul speaks of the example of Christ who “emptied himself of godliness” in a willingness to come and teach us how to live. (PHIL 2:5-11) He says that we are to have that same mind, that willingness. I read something earlier (while waiting for the internet to come back to me…) that seems to fit how this process of emptying to be filled can work in our lives. I offer it today for our reflection.

Be content that you are not yet a saint, even though you realize that the only thing worth living for is sanctity. Then you will be satisfied to let God lead you to sanctity by paths that you cannot understand. You will travel in darkness in which you will no longer be concerned with yourself and no longer compare yourself to others. Those who have gone by that way have finally found out that sanctity is in everything and that God is all around them. They suddenly wake up and find that the joy of God is everywhere.                              (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation)