Practicing Spiritual Practices: Contemplation
If you know me, you know that I am a reader. I love books! I love accumulating knowledge.
I love to travel! I love to experience new cultures and to see things I have never seen before.
It seems like I have this inexhaustible need for more.
There is always more to learn. There is always more things to see and do. There is always more, more, more.
Do you know what that tells me?
It tells me that my Creator made me that way. It tells me that he made me with such a capacity for “more” that in him I can find fulfillment and satisfaction, not in this world, but in his new world.
As I age, the thing that is becoming more and more apparent is that my eyes only see a part of what is happening in this world.
If you look closely, through spiritual eyes, you can see the workings of an unseen world breaking into our world.
If you concentrate your soul, you can start to see how God is working and is active, even in the mundane and ordinary things of this world.
That is what contemplation is. It is the ability to enter into each moment with our heart and soul truly alive to whatever might happen. It is the ability to see beyond what our eyes can see and begin to see what is going on behind the scenes in the spiritual realm.
Contemplation is so much more than thinking really hard. It is slowing down long enough to search the days for symbols and meanings to a larger and hidden world that dwells just below the surface of what we see.
The problem is that we are addicted to “doing” and not “being.” But here is the issue. Evidently we all come to an end with “doing.” Our to-do list comes to an end. Our days of travel come to an end. Our experiences, for better or worse, come to an end. But there is no end to “being.”
The question I keep coming back to is, “Who am I becoming?”
So, this week I am going to focus my mind, heart, and attention on answering that question, and the way I am going to do it is through contemplation. I am going to do my best to notice the world around me and look for God’s fingerprints in all my interactions and activities this week.
I am going to see if I can look below the surface of my fast-paced life and find the rhythm and rhyme of God in it.
Be blessed,
Paul