Seeing God: Embracing Purity and Presence

one of his Beatitudes Jesus says blessed happy flourishing are the pure in heart for they will see God well what does it mean to see God when God doesn't have a body maybe you're not sure that you even want to see God might be kind of like seeing a police car when you're out the highway or maybe you want it more than you want anything else greatest teacher who ever lived said that what's insurmountable and not your problems oh it's the presence of God and his love in your life so you can make this a golden rule day then he makes this remarkable statement blessed or the pure in heart for they will see God [00:00:12]

we've been watching with the Beatitudes they are not things we have to do to try to earn our way into God's kingdom they are the announcement that the good life is available to anybody including people that thought that they were way outside of it and today we look at this particular one the pure in heart the word pure in our day is largely a lost word it sounds kind of prudish like it's just restricted to sexuality but that's not the case it's wonderful word it's a great concept that we actually all want [00:00:48]

Dallas wood among others have talked about the heart and the will are closely connected in the ancient world and our great problem for most of us is we have divided will I don't want to be in great shape but I want to eat these twinkies and I want to learn but I like to just veg out and watch TV Augustine said God make me chased but not yet and and as long as um I'm living with a divided will it's like I'm hitting the gas panel and the brakes at the same time so they have an undivided will to want one thing and particularly to want what is good [00:01:22]

because if I want something but it's not good I'm still going to be kind of divide of inside to want one thing and to have it be good um that is the good life to have an undivided will and Jesus says that what awaits that person in the kingdom is to be able to see God and that's not primarily a physical vision and it's not something that we have to wait for till after we die at the end of The Book of Job eler stump writes wonderfully about this her book wandering in darkness job has been protesting and thundering and then God comes to him [00:02:00]

and he doesn't just ask him difficult questions he asks him questions that point to how good God is and how great God's project is and how gratuitously generous God is to all kind of creatures to ostrich they can't even remember where they laid the egg to the Leviathan that nobody will ever be able to tame or even see and job gets second person knowledge he looks into God's face and see God's goodness and his comment on this was uh before my ears had heard about you but now my eyes have seen you and the idea here is not that I've seen a physical object it is now I know directly how good God is and that answers all my questions [00:02:27]

that tells me that life is good and that my life is good even in the midst of my problems so to see God that's everything and I'll tell you about a little secret weapon we're going through the sermon of the mount but this is a book called the practice of the presence I've been looking forward to telling you about this I am going through this book as I go through the sermon of the mount and as you might know it was written by a man who came to me known as brother Lords but that's not his first name I want to tell you some of his story then you might want to use this very simple part of practicing the presence [00:03:14]

it's a way to see God in your life and you might think of looking for God when then I come home when it's dark and night we go up the Long Street to where we're living here at the cab we will look for crepuscular answers if uh animals if it's twilight or nocturnal answers if it's night so always come to see a POS or a skunk or something but we don't just look for God we look to God in our hearts and in our spirits and and this man Nicholas Herman brother Lawrence was kind of a genius at this you might think that he was born a genius being able to practice the presence of God but you would be wrong [00:03:39]

Carin butcher has done a new translation of this book and she writes uh to do the practice of the prayer presence sometimes called the Methodist method it it can be done by anybody for a micro moment of rest with love we can say whatever is on our mind ask for love share worry be mad give thanks feel Wonder ask for help or just be there's no scorecard on how many times a day we do it no creative AB CD not good news this ordinary practice brings friendship with kindness joy and self compassion this practice is also an exciting daily spiritual experience [00:04:21]

now you might think that Brother LA count of guy that was just always good at this sort of thing just kind of genetically pre-wired for prayer and contact with God not like you an ordinary person no no no no no no no he grew up uh in France actually a section that was hardly even part of France during the three years war initially he became a soldier he was badly wounded he lived with a limp and pain almost all of his life and there were Horrors in the war he would ask God for forgiveness we don't know later on is it what he did to somebody else or what was done to him but being a soldier didn't work out for him [00:05:28]

he became a Hermit and flun out at being a Hermit he became a footman and flunked out of being a footman and eventually he ended up going into a monastic Community he worked in the kitchen for uh many many years and he hated working in the kitchen so uh this is some of his story this is part of what uh Barbara writes in her translation What drew me to brother Len is how really is he developed this practice from his own experience a practice he needed for his own healing and this translation honors and shares his personal wisdom a disabled veteran living with a leing a former prisoner of war raised in poverty was a peasant lacking a traditional education [00:06:10]

a Parisian with a tyrant Tyrant for a King Louis the 14th you might have heard the son God I am the state but it's interesting not many people today read Louis the 14th for guidance in their lives Millions now for many centuries have read this person who died in obscurity and poverty nothing that he said was written down till after he died he was not a famous author a self-described clumsy o uh a survivor of religious wars a sufferer of anxiety a man often in physical Agony from war injuries one of the words that he uses to describe himself was gross large British ugly unwanted clumsy he says he was a clumsy o who broke everything [00:07:30]

and the idea of Brokenness was not just extended to physical objects he was deeply anxious about his own life a deeply broken person you may have read when he was quite young he had a very powerful Vision when he looked at a tree of the goodness of God in the world and how God is present in and cares for everything you can have that moment when you look at a tree but if you think that from that moment on his life was just one of uninterrupted Bliss together with God no no no not at all a man often in physical Agony for war injuries a cook and a sandal repairer this lay brother regularly stopped work headed to the communal prayers limping there with red still wel dishpan hands [00:09:12]

his exceptional calm and responses to life hardships make this unassuming fire and accessible in humanizing Mentor of this - tested practice of the presence prayer and Carmen goes on to write about how this resonated with her because I knew from my own experience of practicing it for decades in response to Childhood trauma before I even knew what presence was or what praying was alongside grain cows and soaring red tail hawks I experience the way nature holds and teaches an injured soul and understood that this power of the presence was somehow with me now how does he describe this so um uh in in his maxims on practicing the presence this is what he says [00:10:36]