“God beneath you
God in front of you
God behind you
God above you
God within you”

-Saint Patrick

“You cannot not live in the presence of God. You are totally surrounded by God…” Fr. Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs: The Gift of Contemplative Prayer

This is such a life-changing thought. We aren’t going to God. We don’t seek Him out. He is there. He is here. Surrounding us all the time.

He is right here, right now, with you.

What we need is awareness of God’s omnipresence. We need to recognize it in the now. It isn’t something you earn or prove yourself worthy to receive.

Jesus viewed sight as something you experience in your heart, not in your eyes.

True seeing if seeing the image of God in yourself. Seeing His identity imprinted in who you are.

True seeing is seeing God’s image and the inherent value and worth in the beggar, the poor, the ones the world has rejected.

True seeing is seeing God in our enemies.

“Either we see the divine image in all created things, or we don’t see it at all.” -Richard Rohr, Everything Belongs

We don’t get to decide who to love. We don’t get to say “they are not like me, therefore I don’t need to care about them.”

That is not what Jesus commanded. If we are in the habit of excluding people from deserving our concern, our care, our selfless love, then we really don’t get it yet.

The ultimate goal of contemplative prayer is to see the world around us the way God sees it.

– Jason