1000 Strands

God, when I sit in this room, I can feel both alone and the opposite of alone.

I can be aware of the table and my coffee. I can feel the air moving in and out to my nose. There is a chair beneath me and a black cat walking back and forth around it all.

I can choose to be aware of You, too: The I Am, The Presence. The One who is always here. I can choose to feel you in that air and in my bones.

God, when I sit in this room, I can feel both alone and the opposite of alone.

I can choose to see you as separate from me. In this way, you are here and yet different from the Me I consciously know. You are a loving relationship that requires space between us. I pray and you come. I request and you give.

I can also choose to see you as essentially in me. In this way, you are here as surely as I am here. You are a loving Presence in my cells that requires a connection with my own mind and body. Here, to love myself is to be loved by you. Here, to accept the body I am in, is to accept that this body is Us. Here, to pray for peace is to know that the peace is here waiting to be accepted already in my guts. To ask you to be with me would be like asking myself to go hang out sometime.

You are here. You are more here in and with me and available to me than my own thoughts and emotions and needs. You are the beautiful, quiet option that I don’t always know how to pick.

Jesus, I have no choice but to believe you are here in whichever way I manage to choose. You are present. YWHW – Presence.

Your bible is confusing. Your people are a mess. And yet, impossible as it seems, as real as this table or the lungs in my chest, God, You are here.

Sometimes I think you just want to be noticed. To be witnessed. I recognize the need in me to be noticed and I wonder if this is part of your image in me now – something holy demanding to be noticed in the pain, in the love, in the people, in the dirt.

I see you. In the trees. Bursting sap. Falling pine cones. Strong branches with kids hanging off them.

I see you. In the blue sky. Endless whispers. Wind from the atmosphere’s edges all the way down to my face.

I see you. In the people. Hand-holding. Laughing so hard they can’t open their eyes.

I see you. In me. Skin upon blood, ligaments, muscles and bones. A heart that beats. A body that breathes. Hopes. Loves. Hurts.

I see you in this body you made to fit this soul just right.

God, you are here as surely as I am here.

Sometimes love is just choosing to see.

Run with Joy 1000strands.com