PRAYERS

  for the Journey

  Along THE WAY

(3) YOUR PRESENCE

My Lord and my God —

What a joy it is to be with You, and to fall down before Your Holy Presence!  I am sorry that I so easily walk away from Your Presence, and so easily allow myself to get caught up in the negativity of the world-that-knows-You-not.  Please forgive me.  Please yell at me, shout at me, bang loudly on the door of my heart; do whatever is necessary to make me hear You and to open up to You. 

 

I really want to bask in the peace, the joy, the delight of living and abiding continually in Your Presence.  I know that without You there really isn't any true life — just misery and emptiness. So I don't know why I keep filling the beautiful silence of Your sweet, melodious voice, the magnificence of the aroma of Your Presence, with the noise and stench of the world-outside-You, the world-that-knows-You-not. 

 

Please keep on calling me back to You — scream if that is what it takes for me to respond to You.  Please, please, keep on knocking on the door of my heart — knock on it however loudly is necessary until I finally stop locking the door — locking You out.  Help me so that someday I will remove the lock permanently, and that no matter what I do, no matter where I am, I will always abide in Your Presence.  Maybe then I could walk in the midst of the world-that-knows-You-not, and not be touched by it; that instead of me being affected by it, it would be affected by me — or really, by You working through me.  I'm sure that it must have been like this for people like Mother Teresa, as it has been for so many of Your saints. 

 

Ah — what a marvelous dream.  Grant, please, Lord, that one day I will allow You to so fill my heart that I will never again let the noise and stench of the world-that-knows-You-not distract me from being filled with Your Holy Presence. Amen.