Filling Ourselves With God

One of the main themes of Nouen's book is prayer, and learning to open ourselves to God, to fill our very beings with God. It has been agreed that this book is harder going than his Advent book, and I think that is perhaps because learning to fill ourselves with God is so very difficult for us. There are so many other things that "fill" us, that eat up our time, that cause us to sometimes, alas, put God at the bottom of our list of things to think about. Turning ourselves around is hard work - good Lenten work!

I love his image of prayer as a way to "clean [one's] heart and to create a new space" - a space that can then be filled with prayer for others, so many others, without becoming weighed down.  That, Nouen says, is the spirit of God praying in us.  What a lovely thought that is - God's spirit praying in us!

Of course, prayer involves not only an open heart, but also open eyes and open ears; when we see the little green buds on a tree - thank you, God!  When we hear a siren or see an ambulance speeding down the street - a quick prayer for the person on his or her way to the hospital. When we see a plane flying close to the airport, a little prayer for its safe landing. A thank you to God when we wake up in the morning and before we fall asleep at night.

An open heart can be at prayer all day - kind of like breathing!

Audrey