The spiritual change we have been discussing for the last two weeks involves how we interact with the whole world and everything in it. Unfortunately, the world God created gets in the way of our seeing God. All that should point us toward God, as icons of the divine presence, often act as idols which hide God from our view. When “the heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1), we look through them to God. In those times the world is alive with the presence of God everywhere we turn.
Last week I suggested that idolatry is our universal starting point. Furthermore, only gradually and not suddenly, does creation begin showing us the Creator, as our propensity to idolize the world begins to diminish. Therefore, at any one time my perspective is somewhere between the creation being nothing but idols and being completely transparent so that God is evident everywhere. The question is not “how do we keep things from becoming idols?” Everything already is an idol for us. Instead, we need to ask “how do we begin to see the world as full of images of God?” My answer at the end of my first post was that this requires prayer and contemplation . . . which needs explanation.
If you think of prayer as primarily petitions and intercessions then you will hear me saying that we have to ask God for the ability to see him in everything. It may sound as if we must hope that God grants us this new perspective and that we must him beg for it. If this is the case, we are at the mercy of God, quite literally, until he miraculously grants to us a new way of seeing.
However, I am not speaking about prayer as petition, but as meditative reflection that, with practice, can shape and change us. Consider the Lord’s prayer.
Our Father, which art in Heaven,
Hallowed be thy Name.
Thy Kingdom come. Thy will be done,
on earth as it is in Heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
As we forgive those who trespass against us.
And lead us not into temptation;
But deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory,
For ever and ever. Amen.
I really do not think this prayer is as much about petitioning God as it may first appear. The apparent petitionary aspects are actually what God has done, is doing, and will do, whether we pray or not. This does not mean that saying these words are empty gestures, but rather that these words were given to change us much more than for us to beseech God to do certain things.
Like the rain he sends on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45), daily bread is given to all. When our daily needs are met it is the work of God. The Creator is seen in our daily bread. We do not call the forgiveness of God into existence any more than the cross was due to our request (Romans 5:10). The eternal mercies of God which flow over all humanity, forgiving with amazing grace, are seen in the fact that we live at all. That sinful people live to see another day is constant evidence of mercy. We are praying ourselves into an awareness of that forgiveness and to hear God’s call to emulate it. Even in temptation, which is not from God, deliverance shows his presence. How can we pray these words and not start to see God in everything and everywhere?
This prayer is not for us to set in motion the works of God, but to challenge us to see how God is already at work and present. God is the Father above, and his reign is coming to earth — as it is in heaven. To repeat and reflect on, through regular prayer, that his is the reign (kingdom), the moving force (power), and the true significance (glory), absolutely throughout all time (forever), is to be drawn into seeing God everywhere. These are not words that form an argument to convince us as much as poetic language to train us in thinking differently.
Though all talk about God is insufficient because no words suffice in describing the inexpressible, we notice that poetry supersedes prose in speaking, although imperfectly, about God. This is because poetry tries to elicit an imagination beyond any words. In a similar way, our seeing must go beyond the creation itself to the unseeable, where our perceiving becomes poetic as well. Seeing beyond seeing.
Prayerful reflection, practiced over time, often because we are meditating on the prayers given to us in scripture, helps us to develop a way of recognizing the unseen. Petitionary and intercessory prayer, though important in their own right, will not help us see God in everything. Entering the timeless quiet where one seeks to hear rather than speak, where words, if there be any, are given to us rather than created from within ourselves, is where we are taught that in all things God is present.
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