Awareness (of God's Presence)
“But if we have food and clothing, with these let us be content” (1 Tim. 6:8).8 The Lord is always showering His gifts on us, but often those gifts come to us disguised in the humdrum blessings of ordinary life…Let us begin with small things. Let us be faithful to God in everything that is within our small strength. In doing so, we will grow to the stature of those who were faithful in much and entered into the joy and glory of their Lord.” (Robin Phillips, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom)
“I assent to finding God in the very places I least expected Him, no longer demanding He show up in my life as lightning and thunder to remove me from all my little obligations and make me great. Rather I find Him in the pith of those tiny things, at the heart of my need and the needs of all those I serve.” (Sarah Clarkson)
“When we pray, if we expect the “miraculous” (in the modern sense), we will grow weary with the ordinariness of our experience. We imagine that we hear nothing, for we have already decided that the sound of the ordinary is nothing miraculous. I always caution inquirers and catechumens in the Church to be prepared to be bored…services can be beautiful and profound, they are no more beautiful and profound than the world around us. The modern mind becomes bored by the so-called “ordinary,” because it has become accustomed to distractions that play to our passions. “Boredom” is what you get when you are not being entertained – it is a modern phenomenon.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“God’s presence is everywhere around us, like the air, the sky, the ocean, and so we become desensitized to God and don’t notice Him at all. It’s not unlike people living in New York City who never go see the Statue of Liberty, or the Empire State building, or perhaps even to Broadway or Wall Street, unless a visitor from outside the city comes and then they show the visitor the sights. These most famous tourist attractions are just part of their normal background and so they pay no attention to them. Rural folk can be fascinated by what they see in big cities, while the people living in the big cities tune these very same things out. Sometimes visitors/outsiders or photographers open our eyes to what is all around us. This perhaps is the purpose of saints in the world – they open our eyes to that spiritual dimension of life which we fail to see because it is so commonplace.” (Fr. Ted Bobosh)
“To a great extent, modern skepticism presumes a world whose “ordinary” existence has nothing to do with the miraculous. Our existence and the providential character of the world are thus reduced to the random workings of chance. The world is inert and opaque and says nothing about God. As such, only the extraordinary, the “miraculous” (in the modern sense), can reveal God. It is a demand that God should agree to be a secular God, to reject His world as sacrament.” (Father Stephen Freeman)
“We are already in the presence of God. What’s absent is our awareness…He [God] is closer to us than our feeble awareness can grasp.” (Richard Rohr , Dynamis 4/2/2018)
When the Holy Spirit takes up His abode in our bodies, then He becomes Lord over us, and not we over ourselves…However, such an unqualified surrender runs against the grain of American values, which emphasize personal independence and “doing one’s own thing.” It runs contrary to our ego’s deep desire for self-actualization and self-expression…We often live mindlessly, with only a vague awareness of God. Rarely do we place our decisions, activities, and relationships under the scrutiny and direction of the Holy Spirit, who is waiting to guide us toward what is best.” (Dynamis 6/27/2014)
“God is far from the ungodly, not in place but in will. The will of God and the will of the ungodly are far apart. But He hears the prayers of the righteous because their will and His will are in harmony.” ( Orthodox Study Bible, Proverbs 15:33)
“If God knows our needs before we ask, why does He want us to ask? I can see two reasons. First, it’s a matter of alignment. God wants us to want what He knows we should have. He wants our minds to get in step with His and recognize our needs through his perspective. Our prayers show how closely we are aligned—or not. Second, God wants us to pray for what He wants to give so we will acknowledge Him as the source of all we have. Prayer for our needs expresses our awareness of our continual dependence on Him. And the more we pray and see how prayers are answered, including which are answered and which are not, the closer we come to the mind of God and learn to blend our wills with His.” (Thomas Williams)
“How do we sustain an awareness of God’s presence? The Lord Jesus offers us specific guidance... First, let our charitable giving be discreet and private. We must also pray in secret…and occupy our hearts with prayer constantly.... Finally, the Lord gives us His own prayer (“Our Father”) as a sure guide and weapon against vainglory. This prayer sustains us as we lift our hearts to Him…Communion with God is prayer…God is with us everywhere. If we were not so distracted, we would have a constant awareness of God's presence — whether we were at home, on the street, in the field, in the forest, on the sea, underground; whether we were in freedom or in captivity — everywhere…The Christian’s most powerful resource is communion with God through prayer…Prayer is the continual dwelling place of communion with the Trinity.” (Dynamis 3/1/2014, Protopresbyter MichaelPomazansk JonathanJackson)