The World, God's Playhouse

"We must get the self out of the way in order to make ourselves available to God"

In reading the Christian mystics and even emulating them, some of their highest aims are reoccurring themes like how does the human soul which hungers for perfection from God draw closer to God in prayer?  For these Christian mystics, the inner life is the life of the soul and the outer life that of the body. 

It is somewhat disconcerting when Christians today find that "normal" Bible study and prayer time has not transformed them into the kind of followers of Jesus that they see from the Bible.  We keep praying the same prayers, doing the same spiritual exercises and find very minimal change in the process.  What the Christian mystics are doing, and more properly should say, in being what God has intended them to be in developing the interior life through a whole deeper different kind of praying than many of us are used to today.

We stop fighting with others and begin the real battle from within.  We stop trying to do more and sit still and begin to listen to what God may be saying in all this.  We find ceaseless activity is not a gift of the Spirit but is a trap of the Devil.  We discover that prayer is not about how we are going to change our lives for God but how God is going reveal what our true needs are and what real changes will truly transform us.

It's not that everything we have been taught or shown is wrong but so much of it unfortunately is backwards.  Holy inactivity leads to activity and not the other way around.  We want to begin as young men or strong warriors for God and God is calling us all back to being a simple child again.  In our helpless and utter weaknesses we find that only God can bring out of us, deep in our soul, what we can not do for ourselves.  It is only the fire of God's love that can melt our cold hard hearts.

I have a beautiful picture of a little boy flying a kite in my office.  I visualize often that this little boy is me as I play out in these open pastures carefree and filled with joy unspeakable.  This picture in my office represents what God wants from all of us, to be like little children and enjoy Daddy God's presence.  Sometimes I think the winds of the Spirit of God are simply whispering to each of us in the middle of the day, God speaking, "Will you play with me?" "Will you play with me? Will you?"