Thursday, November 19, 2009

Near-sightedness

I was in third grade when the doctor proclaimed me "near-sighted" and fitted me for my first pair of glasses, cheap ones with clear kind of pink frames.  One day I couldn't see the black board and had to sit in the first row.  I had to sit so close to the TV to see Saturday morning cartoons that I can still hear my mother's words, "Don't sit so close, you'll ruin your eyes."  Over the years, I have run through a lot of glasses, a decade or two of contacts, and now I'm back to glasses, and so grateful to still be able to see and to read.

Thia morning I was reading about the tax collector who bowed his head and cried out, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."  The notes written by N.T. Wright says this about those words, now known as the Jesus prayer, "Praying for mercy doesn't just mean 'I've done something wrong, so please forgive me.'  It's a much wider petition asking that God send is merciful presence and help in a thousand and one situations, despite the fact that we do't deserve such aid and never could."

As I thought this through, it came to me how spiritually near-sighted we are, at least I am.  Wright says the prayer is asking that God send his presence.  But for me, the issue is not that God will send his presence, but that I will see it.  The writer in Hebrews 13: 5 quotes words from Psalms 118:6 - perhaps words said initially to David since we believe David wrote many of  the Psalms, " I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you." 

God is already here; John  14 gives us Jesus' words on the matter, "I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, that he may be with you forever.  That is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it does not behold him or know him, but you know him because he abides with you and will be in you. (16-17)  Then Jesus goes on to say, "But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, He will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you."  And in Acts 2 we have a record of the receipt of that gift of the Holy Spirit to us.

Now to the near-sightedness, I think I am too often not able or willing to see beyond my own nose to see the presence of God, the Holy Spirit, who never leaves me.  Instead I am ovewhelmed by mere earthly circumstances, my own desires for the moment, my fears, my memory loss - forgetting how God has worked in my life, protecting and rescuing and answering prayer and blessing me.  It is as though I have dark glasses on in the night, and I just can't see that God is present with me right now.

He loves me and he will never forsake me.  He will bring to my mind everything I need to deal with the day, if I will just shut up and listen and own the reality of his nearness.  I don't need to ask for his presence. I have that. I need to acknowledge his presence. His merciful presence.  Life could have gone is such different ways for me, and for you.  But, in God's mercy, he revealed himself to us so that we could know him and his love, so that we would never be alone. 

Thank you God that you are here in this office with me, that you will go with me every step of the day.  You will so guard me that nothing will be allowed into my life that You and I cannot handle.  Help me to see you today, to practice your presence, to do nothing that would create separation between us -that separation of my own making, I know.  Thank you for your endless mercies in my life.  Thank you, especially, that they are new every morning

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