Welcome to more quiet spaces…

I am a procrastinator, plain and simple. I’m the sort of procrastinator who puts things off until the very last minute, always thinking that I’ll do it next month, next week, tomorrow, and then suddenly, I’m hit in the face with a impossible deadline that I’ve brought upon myself.

Sound familiar?

I’ve been procrastinating about this blog. I actually set it up six months ago in August, but now, here it is the last day of February (a leap year day, so not to be seen for another four years), and I’ve finally started the process.

What took me so long?

Lots of things, but basically, it all boils down to “LIFE”. Like you, I’m a busy person, and so much falls by the wayside as I navigate my way through my day. It’s only when I settle into bed at night that I begin to think about all the things I was planning to do, but didn’t. “Oh, well,” I tell myself, “there’s always tomorrow.”

And yet, I know that God tells me that “now is the acceptable time”. After all, now is all I have. Not a second more; not an eon less. This moment, this small measure of time, this  infinitesimal part of my entire life, is all that I have. What I do with it is up to me. If I let it go by, unnoticed and unappreciated, it’s gone forever.

Sobering thought, that ‘gone forever’ idea.

Maybe that’s why so many of us feel that we’ve lost touch with God. Not because we want to and not because God wants it to happen, but because we feel that God isn’t there in the same way as God once was. A friend once said to me, “If God seems far away, who moved?”

We move away from God in the moments of our lives, procrastinating about doing something to be closer to God, hoping that by some miracle, minutes, hours, great spaces of time will suddenly open up and we will be able to devote them to being with God. But that doesn’t happen, at least, not in the ordinary course of our lives.

Perhaps the whole secret to being close to God is making sure that God is with us in the  now of our life – in the moment that we are currently in, this now, the one right at this moment.

Here’s what I have discovered

In a moment when I want to connect with God, I do something that is counter-intuitive to what every one tells me to do. I don’t try to disconnect from the moment by trying to shut out all sights and sounds around me, trying to quiet my racing mind, trying to focus on some inward space where I hope to find God.

Instead, I do the opposite. I make myself aware of everything around me. I feel the clothes on my body, the chair under me, the floor under my feet; I listen to the clock ticking, the sound of the refrigerator turning on, the truck driving by outside; I feel my heart beating, become aware of my breathing; I smell the air around me. I try to be as much “in the moment” as I can.

Then, something wonderful happens.

As I’m “in the moment”, I feel God’s presence with me. That’s because God is in all things, and if I am tuned into all these things, I am tuned into God. Such a simple concept, yet so profound, because it is telling me that God is with me in every second of my life, and just by “tuning in” instead of “tuning out”, I can feel in touch with my God.

Try it.

It’s another Quiet Space in your life where you can meet God.

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