Sitting with God

I've noticed that when I need to sit quietly with God the most, I have the hardest time doing it. I keep finding a bajillion things that "need" to be done or thought about or dealt with BEFORE I can sit and be quiet.  That's why I tend to get up at an insanely early hour.  Sometimes that doesn't even work.

However, if I persevere, keep working at it, then it happens.  This tremendous silence fills wherever I am, fills my head, my heart, my soul.  I can sense God with me right then.  For however long it lasts, I am grateful for the Presence.  I try not to think of anything, ask for anything.  Just sit and be present with the Presence.  Hmm...be present with the Presence. Interesting idea . . . . I can't truly be present with anything else can I?  Ha!

I don't think I'm alone in this.  I think most people have a hard time being silent and still.  God tells us to do so, though, throughout scriptures.  "Be still and know that I am."   How can we know that God is, unless we slow down, stop, and be still.  We miss the fact that our families are with us half the time because we're so busy.  So how could we expect to "be" with God under the same circumstances.  I feel like God is much harder to nail down than our families.  God is magnificently, awe-inspiringly, knee-shakingly huge in a spiritual sense.  I can't put God in a box to be opened when I have time to be quiet.  Nope.  Not possible.  God wants our undivided attention.  God warrants our undivided attention.  No question about it.  Our God is a jealous God.  

I wouldn't want it any other way.  Why?  Because only a God who loves us so completely, so jealously would send us the Son, the Christ to show us the immensity of that love, to show us how to love ourselves and others, to show us how to be obedient to God in view of that love, to show us that obedience to God in view of that love is the only way to God.  The beauty of this is that this love, this compelling, jealous love is a gift to us.  There's no way we can earn it.  There's no way we deserve it.  However, we have it.  We get to keep it, too.  No matter the ways in which we screw up, God still loves us.  God patiently waits for us to "get it".  Nudging us this way and that.  

God's love.  Sitting with God.  Silently, because it's too beautiful to put into words.