Variety: Luke 11:34

“If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light” (Luke 11:34). 

We cannot attain the presence of God because we’re already in the presence of God. What’s absent is awareness. Little do we realize that God’s love is maintaining us in existence with every breath we take. As we take another breath, it means that God is choosing us now and now and now and now. We have nothing to attain or even learn. We do, however, need to unlearn some things.  

To become aware of God’s loving presence in our lives, we must accept that human culture is in a mass hypnotic trance. We’re sleepwalkers. All great religious teachers have recognized that we human beings do not naturally “see”; we have to be taught how. Jesus says further, “If your eye is healthy, your whole body is full of light” (Luke 11:34). Religion is meant to teach us how to witness and be present to reality. That’s why Jesus says , “Be awake.” Jesus talks about “staying watchful” (Matthew 25:13; Luke 12:37; Mark 13:33–37),

May we pray together:  

God, lover of life, lover of these lives,  
God, lover of our souls, lover of our bodies, lover of all that exists: 
It is your love that keeps it all alive…. 
May we live in this love.  
May we never doubt this love.  
May we know that we are love,  
That we were created for love,  
That we are a reflection of you,  
That you love yourself in us and therefore we are perfectly lovable.  
May we never doubt this deep and abiding and perfect goodness.  
We are because you are. 

Richard Rohr