Confession: Being Distracted from the One Thing: Seeing God

My own confession when encountered by this from Psalm 27:4,8 this morning.

"One thing I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: to live in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord.." "'Come,' my heart says, 'seek [the Lord's] face!' Your face, Lord, do I seek."

Keeping my contemplative rhythms has been an important part of maintaining stability and even joy these days. However, like so many (most) others, I am distracted by the public discourse and anxiety and find my attention scattered.

"One thing" from the Psalm reminds me of the importance of a singular focus. Soren Kierkegaard's book "Purity of Heart Is To Will One Thing" explores Jesus' beatitude "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God." (Matthew 5:8) Purity of heart ius not about moralism but about not having our hearts diluted by anything other than the hunger to see God. In short, if seeing God is the only thing in your heart, you will see God.

The contemplative practice of centering prayer is to allow the things that distract from the yearning to see God to be carried off from conscious thought and relinquished into God's hands (Psalm 31:5). To be sure, plenty of distractions (often very good things) crop up daily, but these days they seem to be screaming for attention and contaminating my beholding the beauty of God's face. I am not at all suggesting that I've got this figured out for myself or anyone else, nor am I suggesting futility or defeat. I am only acknowledging how the Psalm called my to my central focus: seeing God.

Words for the day from the Psalms.

"In the shadow of your wings I will take refuge until the destroying storms pass by." (57:1)

"The Lord "gathers the outcasts," "heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds." "The Lord lifts up the downtrodden." (147:2-3,6)

Just to be clear, I am not at all suggesting that some sort of piety protects us from reality, but that if we pay attention, we can discern that God is sharing the storms right with us.

The Right Path Through the Darkest Valley

Yesterday (March 22, 2020) Psalm 23 was suggested by the lectionary for reading in worship, and today (March 23) it was first in my Psalm prayers. Sometimes receiving what such familiar passages offer can be challenging, but then seemingly unrelated events bring them alive with fresh power.

I have noticed before the contrast between "he leads me in right paths" (v. 3 NRSV) and "even though I walk through the darkest valley" (v. 4 NRSV). I am sure I am not alone in thinking (hoping) that right paths would detour around the darkest valleys. I do not think the Psalm is suggesting that there are two different paths on which God leads us, but that even the darkest valley is the right path when God is leading.

As confident as I am in God's sovereignty in harmony with the best of Reformed theology, I do not believe God is a manipulator of events, and certainly to not believe God sent COVID-19 as punishment. I wrote about that on March 16. http://nstolpepilgrim.blogspo tht.com/2020/03/who-sinned.html But I do believe God is present in our present moments (per Jean-Perrre de Caussade's 1741 book now titled "The Sacrament of the Present Moment). We need only pay attention (which is the point of contemplative practices).

Something I hadn't noticed before in 50 years of praying these Psalms on the 23rd of each month, are these line from Psalm 143 that seem to come full circle back to Psalm 23. "Teach me the way I should to." (v. 8) and "Teach me to do ou will ... Let your good spirit lead me on a level path." (v. 10)

Psalm Lines for Today

Every day as I pray through five Psalms I always find at least a line to prompt my conversation with God about what is currently on my mind. I’ll let you make what you will out of these lines that unleashed my words to God today.

Psalm 20:1

The Lord answer you in the day of trouble!

Psalm 50:15

Call on me in the day of trouble.

Psalm 80:2-3

Stir up your might, and come to save us! Restore us, O God; let your face shine, that we may be saved.

Psalm 110:5-6

The Lord is at your right hand; he will shatter kings on the day of his wrath. He will execute judgment among the nations.

Psalm 140:12

I know that the Lord maintains the cause of the needy, and executes justice for the poor.

Who Sinned?

I do not believe God sent COVID-19 (coronavirus) to punish the US or the world for abortion, sexual harassment, homosexuality, gun violence, socialism, or exploitation of the poor. To be sure, we humans in the US and elsewhere have plenty of room for personal and social ethical self-examination. And yes, human actions have consequences. I haven’t seen any research on what may have unleashed COVID-19, but we do know that other viruses have spread from disruption of previously undisturbed environments.

Each month when I come to Psalm 106:15 I cringe a bit. [God] “gave them what they asked, but sent a wasting disease among them.” I rather like how the KJV says, “sent leanness into their souls,” but current events make “wasting disease” rather pointed. Whatever interpretations are teased out of this line, it does point to our human tendency to self-promotion and self-interest without thought to the impact on others. The panic buying of toilet paper and hand cleaning products that was never encouraged by either media or government is a present manifestation of this. I do think the getting what we ask and with it getting wasting diseases and leanness of soul aptly describes our propensity to self-focus in a whole range of concerns.

In the Lectionary Gospel for next Sunday Jesus’ disciples asked him, “Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:2) Jesus’ answer is at once comforting and disturbing. “Neither this man nor his parents sinned; he was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.” (v. 3) In Luke 13:1-5 Jesus emphatically states that those who suffer catastrophes are not being punished for their sins. Yet, in both cases Jesus leaves us with troubling questions. Was God so cruel as to make this man born blind just so that Jesus could come along years later and heal him?  If those who suffer are not worse sinners than anyone else, why are we to repent so we don’t perish as they did?

While I take considerable comfort in Jesus’ assurance that the ordinary sufferings of life are not God’s punishments, I will not offer a casual way of dismissing the distressing aspects of his words. However, juxtaposed with Psalm 106:15, as they were in my reflections today, I do recognize in the call to repentance much more than fessing up to specific sins. Rather, I see it as a call to change the way we think about ourselves and our desires in relationship to the impact of pervasive self-focus that not only inflicts more suffering on those who are most vulnerable, but obscures our recognition of others around us. If my memory serves me right, Dietrich Bonhoeffer called Jesus the man for others. We who aspire to follow Jesus have both opportunity and responsibility to model and call for lives focused on others in a world obsessed with self.

What Do I Expect when I Ask God for Something?

Thanks, Lynn Hansen, for pushing some on this. It’s not that we don’t ask God for things when we pray, nor that God does not respond, but I would contend that the more we grow in praying, even this process changes us profoundly.

The Lord’s Prayer focuses on God’s will with asking for us to have the means to live it. Hard to believe it’s been that long, but 50 years ago I gave up prayer lists (with and without an “answers” column) and began praying through the Psalms monthly. More recently, I’ve added the prayers from the New Testament Epistles as stimulus to my praying. These have continually shaped my prayers both approach and content through these years, often in directions I never would have anticipated.

I resonate well with Romans 8:26-27. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.” In this I have found roots for both my contemplative prayer practices and praying in tongues, especially when under distress.

The instruction in 1 Thessalonians 5.17 to “pray without ceasing,” has taken on deeper significance as I have been enriched by Eastern Orthodox spirituality and “The Jesus Prayer” (Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me a sinner.”) I know rationalistic westerners and literalistic Protestants have trouble with this sort of mystical repetition in prayer (in my practice, my concern is not with the repetition per se but when it is vain or empty). I have found that the 19^th century Russian folk classic The Way of a Pilgrim and the Benedictine hours of prayer have helped integrate prayer into the everyday rhythms of my life.

Yes, there are specific instructions in the Epistles about making requests of God in our prayers, but they seem to come with some cautions about making them with thanksgiving and not for our personal preferences or desires. Philippians 4.6 “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.” James 4.3 “You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.”

All of this was prompted by a Facebook thread in response to this piece about Soren Kierkegaard. https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2020/02/28/startling-prayer-life-soren-kierkegaard?fbclid=IwAR35hJh2YwBIv_zXY0IiyTrpnnvBcj6_CSjPCakD0FKDyQC4KgbsbvFzabs