Give me your attention. Nurture the faint awareness that you have already felt. I am indeed alive and nearer to your consciousness than you’ve ever dared believe.
Open yourself to the persuasion of my presence. I continue to come to you, to engage you at a deeper and deeper level of your awareness. Let yourself be concerned with my presence more than anything else.
Giving me your attention will open the door, and you will experience the great surprise of you life – “I will come in.” I will become a new dimension of your awareness; you will know that I am always with you. Into your often frustrated and confused mind, I will bring peace. This peace will be a sign of my presence.
– Ben Johnson, I Stand at the Door, CTS Press, 1986, 4.
In those days John the Baptist appeared in the desert of Judea announcing, 2 “Change your hearts and lives! Here comes the kingdom of heaven!” He was the one of whom Isaiah the prophet spoke when he said:
The voice of one shouting in the wilderness,
“Prepare the way for the Lord;
make his paths straight.”eMatthew 3:1-3
- What’s your wilderness feel like these days? What frustrations do you harbor? What leaves you unsettled?
- Think of a time when you experienced real peace? What did it feel like? How and why did peace come?
- How have you experienced God’s presence in the past? How do you and might you turn your attention to God in the midst of your daily life
Holy Lord,
Help me to attend to you this day.
Make me aware of your presence.
Nurture our connection,
as I seek to open the door of my life to you all the more.
Help me prepare a way for you into my life,
and in doing so, prepare a way for you into the life of others,
into the life of this world.
AMEN
Abiding in the Vine 