I’m not going to lie, I think about bacon cheeseburgers mid-worship from time to time. Sometimes I’ll even ponder food for so long that I easily dream-drift through each course I desire, ending with the best coconut cream pie ever from Prime Meats (always after my burger and fries, of course!). As I break out of my prophetic food dream, I usually look down to make sure my phone’s on silent (because no one wants to be that guy), only to be alarmed at the 10 text messages that came in while I was focusing on connecting with the Father’s heart. So, of course I have to check to see if any of them are urgent, and before I know it, worship has ended and I have been present for a sum total of five seconds flat. Do better, Andi. Do better.
And what about when I’m actually out at the meal after church on Sunday, eating my desired bacon cheeseburger, fries and coconut cream pie across the table from my husband, three sons and daughter? Well, of course, I MUST check Instagram to see what’s happening in the lives of everyone who I know, generally know, or want to know. Meanwhile, I have five people whom I love, sitting around a table ripe for good conversation and knock knock jokes, while I’m on my phone. Present to my phone. Present to my burger and coconut cream pie, but not present to the opportunity of human connection that’s sitting right in front of me.
We are living in a time where our minds are being rewired for overstimulation.
It’s like we have every tab in our mind open all the time and are pinging left, right, back and center all day every day. To simply sit and have a meaningful conversation is becoming a lost art if we’re not intentional about seeking after it.
Even when we find ourselves in the “waiting rooms of life”, we’re usually itching to have our name called instead of seeing the opportunities to converse and connect with everyone else in the waiting room. We want next, next, next, next, and we keep missing now, now, now, now… we’re not present in the present.
Now let’s bring it back to the presence of God. How are you doing being present in His presence? No condemnation here – It’s a daily practice to ask myself this same question. How are you at intentionally becoming aware of what you already have – His presence – because you have ALL of The Father, Son and Holy Spirit?
It’s hard to be present with others if we don’t know how to be present with God.
Slowing down, resting in Him, reading His word daily (even if only five minutes until the kids start crawling all over us!), turning on worship to change the atmosphere, making ourselves aware of HIs unending presence… it changes things. Being present in our pain and not dismissing it, that is where the eternal love of God touches our lives, and heals our hearts. It’s the power of His presence that changes us and being present in His presence, well… there’s nothing like it.
C.S. Lewis said, “For the present is the point at which time touches eternity.”
Jesus came down to earth, eternity touched time, and now our present lives can be changed because of it. We can learn a lot from Jesus and how present He always was. He was present with His Father and often escaped the crowds and chaos to do so, and He was present with others – with the “one”. The only time He wasn’t present was when He was ignoring someone’s lack of faith.
In Matthew 9:18-25, Jesus is present to Jairus in the midst of the crowd after a rough night in the storm with His disciples and delivering the demoniac. I’d be napping, but Jesus chooses to be present to Jairus when He hears that his daughter is ill. On the way to heal Jairus’ daughter, Jesus is present to the woman with the issue of blood in the midst of the pressing crowds. He turns and sees her, heals her, and calls her “daughter”. Then He continues on with Jairus, removes those with a lack of faith from the room, raises his daughter from the dead and even takes care of her physical needs, making sure that she gets a meal in her belly.
The truth is, Jesus is present with you, right here, right now. Our distractions can dissuade us from being present, causing us to miss moments of connection and transformation.
He is present in the mundane and present in the pain. HE is present in it all.
Today as I dropped my youngest son off at his kindergarten class, a mother and daughter in front of us were twirling and dancing on their way to the classroom. Sammy was observing and smiling while giggling to himself. Not seconds after that grin came across his face was he, too, twirling with exuberance. My heart swelled within me. I didn’t record the moment on my phone or share it on an Insta Story. I was just there, present, proud, and full of joy watching him be an awesome kid – my awesome kid.
Our Father in heaven thinks you’re a pretty awesome kid too. He’s present with you and wants to journey with you. Intentionally becoming aware of His never-ending presence in our lives will bring freedom from captivity, shake our rickety foundations to be rebuilt by the Master Builder, bring healing to our brokenness but also joy in the seemingly unremarkable moments, and an awakened desire to spread the love that He so freely gives us.
Can we simply be present with Him today? He has so much to tell us through His word and the whisper of the Holy Spirit. Let’s choose together to stop missing the moments and instead, be right in the middle of each one – the ordered, the messy, the electric, the magnetic, even the monotonous – silencing ourselves to hear His whisper through them all.
When I am still, compulsion (The busyness that Hilary of Tours called “a blasphemous anxiety to do God’s work for him”) gives way to compunction (being pricked or punctured). That is, God can break through the many layers with which I protect myself, so that I can hear his Word and be poised to listen…
In perpetual motion I can mistake the flow of my adrenaline for the moving of the Holy Spirit; I can live in the illusion that I am ultimately in control of my destiny and my daily affiars…
French philospher and mathematician Blaise Pascal observed that most of our human problems come because we don’t know how to sit still in our room for an hour.”
– Leighton Ford
