Too many of our lives are spent in a fog of unawareness. To steal popular verbiage from the social justice world, we are not “woke.” We are asleep to the things that are around us, and because we are asleep to them, we cannot avoid them if they are dangerous, manage them if they are part of our responsibility, enjoy them if they are gifted pleasures, or respond to them should they need our input. I see it all of the time. Just the other day, I watched a woman whose gaze was engulfed by the glow of her phone as her child was trying to get her attention. He obviously wanted to show her some accomplishment and share a moment. Unaware of her son, she appeared to be completely awake to whatever video was playing on the device. In fact, she was transfixed by it, perhaps even rapt with it, but the sound of her boy was muffled and distant, as if trapped in wads of blankets. She responded to him a minute or two after he had made the request, but he had already given up and left her presence. She spoke into the air. The irony of that moment is that I doubt that she was even really aware of the video. She was likely just passively viewing the content without any true focus or thought. In essence, she missed both the full joy of the content, and the fuller joy of her child. But I cannot judge her. I am guilty of the same exact thing many times over, and in many different ways.
One place where we do this far too often is with God. We should strive to live toward an ongoing, unending awareness of his presence. He is, after all, everywhere. We replace an awareness of God with an awareness of worldly things. We become affixed to something that is good, like the pleasure of a moment, and fail to grasp something better, like a living and breathing relationship with the creator of the universe. This fog of unawareness keeps us from having the best that God has to offer, and it prevents us from living the kind of victorious life God would have us to live. If we make ourselves aware of God and his presence, then we will prioritize our lives correctly. The phone will not get in the way of our children. Our experiences in the world will be enhanced just as they are when we have someone with whom we can share them. Think about enjoying a truly great movie, but then having no one to discuss it with. If we make ourselves aware of God’s presence, we will always be able to share our experiences with him — and with others.
Finally, the person who honestly seeks the presence of God, and thirsts for him, finds that his love is better than life (Psalm 63:1-3).
Comments