Q+A: What Practices Help You Know God is Near?
In grief, boredom, and ordinary time
Last Sunday someone asked this question and I haven’t stopped thinking about it: What practices help you know God is near? It seems like a simple question. If you grew up in the church like I did, you know the typical answers you give or were told.
Go to church. Read your bible. Pray. Repeat.
To these I would say yes! And also.
If you will allow yourself a moment of pure honesty, I wonder if the “right answers” may sometimes leave you feeling lost or lonely or on the outs. Not because they are bad practice but perhaps because they have been done or modeled with the wrong energy.
What do you do when you’re in a season where the way you understand the directive to readyourbibleandpray leads to knowing less than you felt you ever knew before?
What do you do when your spiritual personality1 doesn’t lend itself well to contemplative moments and deep study?
What do you do when the things you used to practice to remember God was near have led you down an unfamiliar spiritual road?
What do you do about the impossible dissonance you feel while reading a morning devotional for personal formation and then reading the news filled with communal destruction?
It seems to me like this is an appropriate space to hold these question before us and work through, in real time, those things that keep us stuck and heartbroken and questioning the real presence of God in the midst of grief and war and ordinary time.
To begin the conversation I chose our Questions + Arrows format, which is when I take one question I’ve heard from readers and/or listeners and try provide three arrows for your next right thing.
While it may seem more efficient to hear someone else give an answer, it’s more formative to have a question and begin to pay attention to the arrows that lead you to your own answer (or at least lead you to a space where you’re five percent less stuck.)
Over the last (almost!) year here on Substack, I’ve shared various spiritual practices I personally rely on during various seasons and stages of life:
But it’s not enough to just tell you what helps me know God is near. I want to also help you discern how can you find your own practices, too. What does it look like to take the wisdom from the ancient paths and integrate it with our actual personal and communal lives? I’d love to explore that with you here.