How to Practice the Presence of God

Faith, in its most practical sense, is the awareness of the presence of God in all things and in all places. It is a growing recognition that God is really present in the ordinary as well as the extraordinary things, events, people, and places that we encounter in our daily lives. There is a Celtic prayer that expresses what I’m calling here, “the practice of the presence of God” in all things very intimately:

You get the picture. This level of the awareness of God in all things, all places, and all times, arises from the daily practice of a living faith carried out in the presence of God. How can we learn to practice this level of awareness of God’s presence in all things? Such a practice is not just for the saints among us, it is something eminently available to all of us. God is present to each and every one of us at all times. He is here with us, in every moment, in every place, in all situations, yes, even the difficult situations we encounter in our day. But are we awake enough to notice His presence most of the time?

The basis for this daily effort to practice the awareness of the presence of God is our desire to know God more intimately. The more intimately we get to know Him, the more we will be drawn to Him. The more we practice being in the presence of God, the more we will begin to realize that He is near to us just as much in the bad times as in the good times. The following are some simple, even seemingly ordinary ideas of how we can practice the awareness of God’s presence throughout our day.

I was with a group of people engaged in faith formation discussions last week and one of them was a young mother of three small children. She expressed how busy she was and how difficult it was to find private time to be alone to pray, given all of the demands on her time and attention, throughout the busyness of her days. “How can someone like me practice the presence of God in the middle of my busy days?” Another mother in the group offered this suggestion: “Sometimes, in the middle of the ongoing chaos, I stop for a moment and I just look intently into each of my wild, wacky children’s faces and I become intimately aware again of my deep love for each of them, and of God’s love for them and for me. It’s usually only a small moment of awareness, but in that moment, I feel God’s presence in them and all around me, and I feel a deep sense of wonder and gratitude and it changes everything.” That is a small example of how we can practice being aware of the presence of God in the ordinary realities of our lives.

Here is another. We believe that God created all things, seen and unseen. If this is so, why would He not be able to make His presence known to us in and through all things, great and small. You’ve heard the phrase, “Stop and smell the roses.” There is a certain wisdom in it, isn’t there. I remember once, while heading to work one day, my mind filled with the stress of all that I had to do that day, I looked down and saw a single Johnny Jump Up flower growing out of a crack in the sidewalk. It was so incongruous, so out of place, yet so stunningly alive and brilliantly beautiful. It had no business growing there. Yet there it was in all of its tiny and vigorous beauty. In that little moment, stunned by beauty, all of the stress I had been feeling was forgotten and I felt the presence of God in the surprise of that tiny, yet extravagant expression of beauty. It felt like God was there with me and saying, “Look at that! Isn’t it beautiful?” That was years ago now, yet that memory remains as stunning in my mind today as it was then. How can one respond to such serendipitous and generous gifts? The only proper response is gratitude.

We believe, too, that each and every one of us is made in the image and likeness of our Creator. Here, then, is a very real, though not so easy, way to practice the awareness of the presence of God. Try to practice “seeing” all of the people you encounter throughout your day, on the bus, on the street, at work, or at home, as bearers of the “image and likeness of God”, that same image and likeness that you bear within yourself. Is that not a powerful way to practice the presence of God? Is that not a great way to practice the Two Great Commandments, to “love God with your whole being and your neighbor as yourself?” This is not easy, especially when that image and likeness of God is so often hidden behind bad behaviors, deformities of one kind or another, physical or psychological. But, according to our faith, there it is. Practice the awareness of that and it will make all the difference in how you see, treat, and care for others, as well as yourself.

God truly is present in all things, places, and times. It is right and proper for we who believe in this God who is love, through and through, to practice being aware of His intimate presence more and more in our daily lives. When we do, everything in our lives will change in ways we can only imagine. We will think differently, be more conscious of our choices, how we treat others, and how we respond to life’s joys and its challenges knowing that God is with us. Let’s begin this practice today.