Eugene Peterson is one of my favorite authors on spirituality and ministry. The quotation below will give you a sense of why I appreciate his wise simplicity:
?I want to simplify your lives. When others are telling you to read more, I want to tell you to read less. The world does not need more of you; it needs more of God. Your friends do not need more of you; they need more of God. And you don?t need more of you; you need more of God.
?The Christian life consists in what God does for us, not what we do for God; the Christian life consists in what God says to us, not what we say about God. We also, of course, do things and say things; but if we do not return to Square One each time we act, each time we speak, beginning from God and God?s Word, we will soon be found to be practicing a spirituality that has little or nothing to do with God.? (Eugene Peterson. Subversive Spirituality. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1994, 1997, p. 30)
Oh Father, may my life be more focused on You and less focused on my experience of You. May You be magnified in my vision and may I be diminished. Amen.
Alan, this notion confuses me “may my life be more focused on You and less focused on my experience of You”. I really don’t get this . . . isn’t the knowing experience what I crave? Sensing the presence? And Mother Teresa’s grief was knowing she was missing some connection she had felt enormously when it withdrew. She knew the difference from what she had
enjoyed and what was lost. Wasn’t she always efforting at restoring that community/unity? In my case it’s still not recognizing it when it is available.
weve got a saying
;; you are so busy focising on the things of the Lord that you miss the Lord of thr things.Maybe this saying can help you as bit Ging.