It is a new morning, a new week, and I begin by taking a deep breath, easing myself into morning prayers and a hot cup of coffee. I choose to begin slowly, refusing to let the “to do” list in my head take charge. It clamors for attention, but I put it in its place – somewhere down the line from finding my proper orientation to Jesus, to myself and to others. Today, I ask Jesus, “How shall I begin?”
Whether it is an old adage that pops up from memory, or the prompting of the Holy Spirit, the words “Be Alert” come to mind. I feel Jesus prompting me to begin the new week by being alert to my immediate surroundings. This piece of wisdom sounds a lot like a new phrase and practice I have learned this year. “Notice what you notice.” What are the details that draw my attention? Where is the light? Where is it coming from? What sounds or silence pervade? Where does my mind wander upon first waking? How does my body feel… tired or strong, agitated or rested? To be alert draws us into the present moment, and that is a good way to start the day.
But I feel Jesus drawing me to something deeper. He is asking me to be alert to him. Where is Jesus in my immediate surroundings and what is He doing, today? It’s a good question and another place of orientation. It causes me to look at everything around me as a vehicle or vessel which God has made to reveal himself more clearly and deeply. It is easy to do this in nature, for instance, like on my walk by the bay each morning. Where is Jesus in this scene? He is the light. His faithfulness endures like the rising of the sun. He is the wind. He moves where He wants to with force, both gentle and strong. His glory covers the earth like the waters cover the seas (Hab. 2:14). It is easy to see Jesus in nature, the things He has made and in which we see his character so clearly. How much more important, though, that we would see him in the people around us – the person He has made, who is also reflecting his glory. Maybe Jesus is asking us to be alert this way too. See Me, Jesus says. See Me all around you.
I have been reading a book that was recommended to me almost thirty years ago, The Divine Conspiracy by Dallas Willard. In it, Willard beautifully makes that case that when Jesus said, the “kingdom of heaven is at hand” or the “kingdom of God has drawn near”, in effect, He was saying the Kingdom of God is everywhere, all about you. It is immediately present to you. As Paul said, we live and move and have our being in it. This was not a new idea. The ancient Hebrew scriptures were saturated with the idea that God permeated the world He had created. And with Jesus, we now – all of us- have access to move in God’s kingdom, his presence, like never before. Willard says this:
To his [Jesus’s] eyes this is a God-bathed and God-permeated world. It is a world filled with a glorious reality, where every component is within the range of God’s direct knowledge and control – though he obviously permits some of it, for good reasons, to be for a while otherwise than as he wishes. It is a world that is inconceivably beautiful and good because of God and because God is always in it. It is a world in which God is continually at play and over which he constantly rejoices.”[1]
So, maybe we should take seriously the advice to be alert, notice what we notice. The sun breaking over the horizon, the sound of coffee brewing, the quiet of the morning, the movement of another person in the house, the dog snoring, the garbage truck rumbling through the neighborhood. God is here, present, everywhere. We live and move and have our being in God –which means, in his all-encompassing love, peace, safety, provision, mercy, wisdom… and so on. All that is God, we live in. Pay attention, Jesus says. “I am showing you heaven on earth.”
The way I see it, we are given a choice of how we will live out our present day (which is all we have authority over, anyway). Today, we can look for and find Jesus in our daily routines, passing through the invisible barrier between ordinary and extraordinary, waltzing into his eternal Presence, to explore his kingdom of beauty, love and peace. Or… we could just get up and get to the grind like we’ve done before. Oh Lord, open my eyes to see You. Draw me into your world. Teach me how to truly live. Amen.
[1] Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy; (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998), page 61.