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 Mike, a regular contributor to canadianchristianity.com, is perhaps most well known for his book 'The Mystery of Marriage.' that won the ECPA Gold Medallion award. This is an edited excerpt from his book 'Practicing the Presence of People (Waterbrook Press, 1999)
[other pieces by Mike Mason]
Of all the devotional books I've read, Brother Lawrence's The Practice of the Presence of God is the one I keep coming back to. Gradually its simple ideas about prayer have been woven into my heart.
I love to pray. There's really nothing I'd rather do. Socially I tend to feel awkward and insecure, but leave me alone in a room or beside a quiet lake and I'm happy as a clam. A contemplative by nature, in years of solitude I've learned a good deal about what is known as contemplative prayer.
One day in contemplation there came to me the little phrase the practice of the presence of people. And with it came this thought: Why not take all that I've learned about knowing God through contemplative prayer, and apply it to knowing people?
After all, since God is a person whom we relate to through prayer, shouldn't the principles of prayer apply equally to knowing other persons who are made in His image?
While countless books have been written on the contemplation of God, I know of nothing on the prayerful contemplation of people. Yet the more I pondered my phrase, the more deeply excited I grew. In fact I actually found myself spending more and more time with people, so eager was I to experiment with this wonderful idea!
Most amazing of all, I found that it works. By treating people the way I treat God, I actually began to relax with them and enjoy them. Not only that, but the more I make my peace with people, the deeper grows my peace with God. The more I pay attention to people and connect with them, the richer grows my prayer life. The more I give myself to others, the more happy and fulfilled I feel.
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In short, by practicing the presence of people I began to learn how to love. For people, like God, simply are who they are, and loving them happens as we encounter this mystery. It comes through contemplation of who they are.
You'll sense what I mean if anyone close to you has died. In the physical absence of the loved one, what else is there to do but reflect, remember, contemplate? In the stillness, love grows deeper.
Following the death of my mother, my father often said, "I only wish I could have loved her while she was still here the way I do now." This is the goal of contemplation: to love right now as we will in heaven. To contemplate God is to realize our oneness with Him in spirit. Similarly the sign that we are practicing the presence of people is that we begin to feel one with them in spirit. We find ourselves seeing things about them that we never noticed before, understanding them from the inside out, tenderly identifying with their weaknesses, and marveling at their larger-than-lifeness.
To be united to God, we must get over all our fears and misconceptions about Him, coming to know Him as pure love, and accepting His forgiveness so that no sin is allowed to separate us. In the same way, being united to people means overcoming all our fears and judgments so that no sin or imperfection will stain our fellowship.
Is this even possible? Of course it is. It is called love and "love covers over a multitude of sins" (1 Peter 4:8). Pondering this verse, I think of a gentleman taking off his coat and laying it down in a mud puddle so that a beautiful lady in dainty shoes may walk across. In this parable, the gentleman is Jesus, the coat is His blood, the beautiful lady is you and I, and love is the bridge across which we walk into one another's arms.
(Note we will resume Mike's 'Gospel according to Job' series in coming weeks)
May 15/2008
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