Spirituality - Learning to See God in My Life

These quotes are from The Contemplative Pastor - Returning to the Art of Spiritual Direction.  I found it in a Goodwill store and bought the amazing little volume.  These are from the introduction - haven't even started the book yet!

Christian spirituality means living in the mature wholeness of the gospel.  It means taking all the elements of your life – children, spouse, job, weather, possessions, relationships – and experiencing them as an act of faith.  God wants all the material of our lives. 

The assumption of spirituality is that always God is doing something before I know it.  So the task is not to get God to do something I think needs to be done, but to become aware of what God is doing so that I can respond to it and participate and take delight in it. 

…my job is not to solve people’s problems or make them happy, but to help them see the grace operating in their lives.  It’s hard to do, because our whole culture is going in the other direction, saying that if you’re smart enough and get the right kind of help, you can solve all your problems.  The truth is, there aren’t very many happy people in the Bible, but here are people who are experiencing joy, peace and the meaning of Christ’s suffering in their lives.

The work of spirituality is to recognize where we are – the particular circumstances of our lives – to recognize grace and say, “Do you suppose God wants to be with me in a way that does not involve changing my spouse or getting rid of my spouse or kids, but in changing me, and doing something in my life that maybe I could never experience without this pain and suffering?”

Sometimes I think all I do as pastor is speak the word “God” in a situation in which it hasn’t been said before, where people haven’t recognized his presence.  Joy is the capacity to hear the name and to recognize that God is here.  There’s a kind of exhilaration because God is doing something and, even in a little way, it’s enough at the moment.