In the Everyday

I’ve often reflected on those places in my life where I tend to notice God’s presence more, where I feel closest to God. I’ve shared with you many times that for me, it is often out on the ocean, the vastness, the great expanse of it all. In kind of a similar way, I have felt that presence while way up in the mountains looking out over the breathtaking beauty of creation from a high vantage point. And many times in worship, especially through music, I’ve sensed the Spirit stirring in my soul…

However, I can tell you that I don’t often expect God to show up in the midst of my everyday life: washing dishes, sitting in meetings, driving in traffic. And I do have to wonder whether our expectations limit our ability to see and experience the holy and sacred infused in the everyday.

There is this great book called Practicing the Presence of God, by a monk named Brother Lawrence. He writes about cultivating an expectation and an awareness of God’s presence, even within very simple things like while washing dishes or sitting in silence with the other brothers over dinner.

In a like manner, Barbara Brown Taylor talks about the experience of hanging laundry and seeing the laundry on the line as “prayer flags,” and feeding her animals, noticing a deep sense of gratitude. Simply becoming aware of the holy infused in the everyday.

Brother Lawrence’s claim is that this kind of expectation and awareness, this openness and disposition, will ultimately bring us into the presence of something greater than ourselves. And in those moments we experience a sense of wholeness.

What is it that keeps our lives so fragmented? What is it that might keep us from experiencing the spiritual wholeness for which we yearn? What is it that blocks our ability to notice God’s presence in the midst of our everyday lives?

Albert Einstein famously said, “The way I see it you have two ways to live your life: the one as if no miracles exist, and the other as though everything is a miracle.”

All of this raises the question: What is my disposition toward life? What am I expecting? What am I open to? What about you?

Let us pray: Holy God, Even in the midst of life’s fissures and fragmentation, we sense there is an underlying connection, a wholeness. We sense an underlying oneness and your presence binding us together. Give us open eyes, open hearts, open hands that we might notice You, woven into all that has being. May we receive this life and all your gifts as sheer blessing. Amen.