finding God every day

A brand new calendar forces reflection on the passing of time yet also moves us toward new opportunities.

During my “senior” season, I am finished setting resolutions. No more of the usual “less sugar, lose some weight and save more money” focus.

This year, I want to dig deeper. Maybe it is the aging factor that forces me beyond the mere physical and into the extraordinary. Or maybe I have learned how empty some resolutions feel.

I seek something with more impact. So I have decided to focus in two directions:

To Look for the Presence of God Each Day.

I know the Divine Three live inside me, but I also believe God moves mysteriously around me.

During this new year, I want to be more aware of that Divine presence:

In the energy of a crackling fire
In the dancing eyes of children
In the musical tones of nature’s breezes
In the faces of strangers at coffee shops, the mall and the lines at Wal-Mart
In the perseverance of the disabled who refuse to be victims
In the hugs of my son
In the colors and textures of my world

When I intentionally seek the presence of God, I hope to discover spiritual truths in new ways. Being more aware of God’s personal steps in my world reminds me he is my constant companion.

To Listen for the Divine Whisper Each Day.

God wants to communicate with us. He is the Word, and he is consistent in his desire for relationship.

But our world is so noisy, we often cannot hear what he longs to share with us.

I am fortunate to work in a job that involves silence. I write with no background music or white noise. Yet I can still miss the soft baritone of my Savior.

This year I want to be more aware of his voice, to hear with an extraordinary sonic volume:

When God gives direction or guidance
When he reminds me to backtrack or fix something wronged
When his creative whisper births an idea for a new book
When he asks me to be still and know
When he just wants to say, “I love you.”

My goal for this year is to spend time each evening with a few moments of evaluation: How was the presence of God real that day? How did I hear God speak that day?

Maybe by next December, I will have developed a keener sense of the Trinity in every day life.

That goal gives me hope.

With a new year comes the opportunity to revise our goals. Check out Setting and Reaching Your Writing Goals.

dandelions - woman In her best-selling book, Moving On, Sarah Ban Breathnach lists the seven senses. The usual five we know: sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. But then she adds knowledge and wonder.

A working definition of “wonder” is “Surprise mingled with admiration caused by something beautiful, unexpected or inexplicable.”

As we age, I think we can lose our sense of wonder. Children can spend hours just looking at a dandelion, caught in the wonder of such a cheery yellow flower.

Many of us cherish the memory of a little boy’s grubby hands, bringing his mommy a stone he dug from the riverbank, a bunch of early spring flowers or a wriggling worm – his wonder of something surprising shared with his precious mom.

In the hubbub of life, we can lose that admiration for the things we cannot explain. Instead, we tend to just move on – to stay busy and do our thing, oblivious of life’s pulsing around us. Avoiding the presence of God in the ordinary.

To restore some hope, I’ve decided to list some of the things that feed my sense of wonder. To force myself to stop and listen, to revel in the world around me and rediscover my intuitive soul.

In my gratitude journal, I’ll include these items that fill me with a surprising beauty, a restored wonder:

The sudden silence of my universe as a midnight snow begins to blanket the ground
The tiny fingernails of newborns, a reminder of how fragile is the miracle of life
The detailed featherings of blue jays – gray, white, black and royal blue – no two the same
The consistent hammering of the red-headed woodpecker in my elm tree. How does he not have a migraine after all that pounding on the bark?
The way memory blips make life disappear or bring to mind a special moment from decades ago
The careful pulsing of my heart, steady and regular – a miracle in itself
The moment a soul steps out of its earthly body and transfers to eternity
A crackling fire that exudes warmth, aesthetic pleasure and security all at the same time
When the souls of two people connect and blossom into love
The way God whispers answers to prayer before we utter the request
How pets know the exact time we are coming home and run to the door before we turn into the drive
The vastness of space and the amazing synchronicity of God’s creation
How Patrick Mahomes can turn his body northeast and throw southwest
How ideas spark from deep creativity and give writers a place to begin
How children give love so easily, not yet marred by the ugliness of self-sufficiency

I need to spend more time experiencing wonder – to nurture this sense and appreciate all the things in my world that are admirable and beautiful.

A focus on wonder helps reboot the hope muscle and reminds me that life is better than it sometimes appears.

As Frederick Buechner wrote, “Never question the truth of what you fail to understand, for the world is filled with wonders.”

For a book that expresses the wonder of hope, check out Hope Shines.

RJThesman.net

Author | Coach | Speaker | Editor

Hope for the New Year

Hope Seeks Wonder