About a year ago my daughter Eliana, went through a phase where she didn’t want to use a spoon or fork to eat her food. Being two and a half at the time she found it much easier to use her fingers to eat. My wife and I were constantly reminding her to use her utensils. Each meal was like a battle. During one supper while my wife was up from the table my daughter turned to me and said, “Don’t look at me daddy.” I thought this was strange so I turned my head away but I could still see her in my peripheral vision. She slowly reached her hand (with no spoon in it) towards her plate. I turned my head back towards her. She pulled her hand back and said “Don’t look at me Daddy”. I turned my head away again and her hand extended and grabbed some food. I turned back to her and said “Use your spoon Eli.” She answered, “I told you not to look at me daddy!” In her mind it was I who had done the wrong by watching her break the rule. She had thought that it isn’t really wrong if they don’t see me, and it is very inconvenient that they are always watching. I think this is sometimes how I view God.
The flip side of this is that my daughter, being a preschooler, gets frustrated very easily over simple things. (Putting on her shoes for example.) When she has difficulty her response is generally to fall on the floor crying as if she is totally defeated. Oftentimes my wife or I will be right beside her during these times. We will usually say something like, “What is wrong. Use your words. If you are having trouble I am right here, just ask me for help.” We find it very frustrating that she just flies of the handle while we are right there willing and able to help her. I think this is sometimes how I treat God.
God is always with us. He always sees us. Usually we would think of this in the negative way. It makes us feel guilty that he has seen us sinning. If we were more aware of his presence perhaps we wouldn’t sin so much. The other situation is also true though. When a little problem (that doesn’t seem little to us at the time) comes up we forget that a loving all-powerful being is with us and wants us to ask for his help.
I started to think about this again recently because I was asked to preach at my home church about faith in the workplace. It was a hard topic for me to address because I felt odd as a person who works in a Christian workplace addressing a group that mostly works in a secular environment. The best thing I thought I could offer them is that God is always there. In fact I had a cynical thought: The main difference is that most people work with people who do not believe that their all powerful maker is with them and I and my Christian co-workers often act as if our all powerful maker isn’t with us.
So how do we change this? How can we be more aware that God is with us every moment of every day? How can we have that knowledge to keep us from doing the things we are ashamed of him seeing as well as be comforted by his presence and seek his aid rather than letting things drive us to despair?
For the sake of blog length I will have to leave most of my answers to these questions to the next few blogs, but rather than raise a problem and offer no solution I will give you some practices that I or others I know have found useful. One way that God’s children have used as a reminder of God’s presence is fasting and as a call to prayer. Fasting gives us that tangible ache that reminds us to focus on God. (For more on fasting you may want to read this blog: http://chdevotions.blogspot.com/2008/02/lent.html ). Another way is to have a “touch piece”, something you carry with you (a small cross in your pocket, a WWJD bracelet) that every time you touch or see reminds you that God is with you. One last idea that I heard from a preacher (I think it was Bruxy Cavey, the teaching pastor at the Meeting House) is to set your watch to go off at strange intervals (i.e. Every 23 min) and every time it beeps simply take a few seconds to realize that God is with you.
Those are just some suggestions. Over the next two blogs I will write about some tips for our prayer lives that can make us more aware during our days that the Lord is always with us.
Mark Wallace
The flip side of this is that my daughter, being a preschooler, gets frustrated very easily over simple things. (Putting on her shoes for example.) When she has difficulty her response is generally to fall on the floor crying as if she is totally defeated. Oftentimes my wife or I will be right beside her during these times. We will usually say something like, “What is wrong. Use your words. If you are having trouble I am right here, just ask me for help.” We find it very frustrating that she just flies of the handle while we are right there willing and able to help her. I think this is sometimes how I treat God.
God is always with us. He always sees us. Usually we would think of this in the negative way. It makes us feel guilty that he has seen us sinning. If we were more aware of his presence perhaps we wouldn’t sin so much. The other situation is also true though. When a little problem (that doesn’t seem little to us at the time) comes up we forget that a loving all-powerful being is with us and wants us to ask for his help.
I started to think about this again recently because I was asked to preach at my home church about faith in the workplace. It was a hard topic for me to address because I felt odd as a person who works in a Christian workplace addressing a group that mostly works in a secular environment. The best thing I thought I could offer them is that God is always there. In fact I had a cynical thought: The main difference is that most people work with people who do not believe that their all powerful maker is with them and I and my Christian co-workers often act as if our all powerful maker isn’t with us.
So how do we change this? How can we be more aware that God is with us every moment of every day? How can we have that knowledge to keep us from doing the things we are ashamed of him seeing as well as be comforted by his presence and seek his aid rather than letting things drive us to despair?
For the sake of blog length I will have to leave most of my answers to these questions to the next few blogs, but rather than raise a problem and offer no solution I will give you some practices that I or others I know have found useful. One way that God’s children have used as a reminder of God’s presence is fasting and as a call to prayer. Fasting gives us that tangible ache that reminds us to focus on God. (For more on fasting you may want to read this blog: http://chdevotions.blogspot.com/2008/02/lent.html ). Another way is to have a “touch piece”, something you carry with you (a small cross in your pocket, a WWJD bracelet) that every time you touch or see reminds you that God is with you. One last idea that I heard from a preacher (I think it was Bruxy Cavey, the teaching pastor at the Meeting House) is to set your watch to go off at strange intervals (i.e. Every 23 min) and every time it beeps simply take a few seconds to realize that God is with you.
Those are just some suggestions. Over the next two blogs I will write about some tips for our prayer lives that can make us more aware during our days that the Lord is always with us.
Mark Wallace
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