Starting something new: With today’s post I’m trying out a new idea. Knowing how pressed we all are for time — and equally aware of how much “stuff” comes into all of our mailboxes each day asking to be read — today during prayer I asked a simple question of God: What do I have to give or say to you that could possibly rise above the noise of our everyday lives? The answer I sensed perhaps should have been obvious to me: Give them less and invite them into silence.
As I have written before, silence is perhaps one of the best tools we have to draw closer to God and continue to make some sense of our lives. So while I may still post the occasional longer entry about something on my mind or something I have read, I’m going to try to write more often and shorter (about the length of one of my Living Faith devotions), all the while inviting you to spend some time in silence, where the God of all of our wants and desires dwells and waits for us. We can find God there, in the midst of family crises, illness, work problems or loneliness, if we only enter in and reach out for the One who created us. “Reaching out for God is reaching God,” as Mark Thibodeaux, SJ, has written so eloquently.
So I’m going to be living and praying each day, searching for one word upon which I can briefly reflect, a word that will also beckon you to spend some time in silence, searching for that word’s unique meaning for you in your journey of faith.
Today’s Word: Irresistible
I heard this word today somewhere — irresistible. Now there are lots of senseless things that can sometimes be irresistible to us, such as television, eating too much of the wrong things or other such vices. That perhaps is a subject for another time. But the immediate sense of this word that I felt today is a comforting and peaceful notion: We are irresistible to God. God cannot get enough of us.
But we have a hard time believing this, don’t we? Why, we ask, would God want to spend time with us? Why would God care one way or another if we turn toward Him and say, “here I am?” But we also know the answer if we care to take the time to think about it. We are irresistible to God because God made us, and He made us to be in relationship with Him. The beauty and grace of all this is that when we don’t respond, when we forget to turn toward God, God is still there, waiting for us. God never grows weary of waiting because we are precious and perfect creatures of His own imagination and love. God waits because He cannot possibly resist the urge to do so. So believe it: You are irresistible.
Ask yourself in silence: Am I willing to believe this? If so, how do I respond? How does it change my life?
