Wat die oog nie sien nie

Ek weet nie van een mens wat nie op een of ander manier soek na iets van God se groter realiteit in hulle lewens nie. Party van ons soek op besonder vreemde plekke..., maar die wortel van ons soeke is ten diepste na God. Hierdie gedagte word voortdurend deur die Bybel en deur al die groot Christen skrywers ge-eggo. God soek veral ook na ons. En dis in die misterieuse landskap van gebed dat ons vir God op ‘n besondere manier ontmoet. Die groot uitdaging is om nie die ontmoeting te probeer orkestreer aan die hand van my eie verwagtings nie, maar om God en sy proses te vertrou. Om oop te raak daarvoor dat God dalk iets nuuts aan my wil wys, wat ek nog nie vantevore gesien het nie. (Wat die oog nie gesien en die oor nie gehoor en in die hart van ‘n mens nie opgekom het nie, wat God berei het vir die wat Hom liefhet.- 1 Kor.2:9)

Na aanleiding van soveel van julle se navrae oor hierdie gedeelte van Ronald Rolheiser wat ons in die week gelees het, stuur ek dit graag en glo dat dit jou dalk op ‘n manier iets sal help om iets te  verstaan van God se wêreld en dit waartoe God ons nooi.

"PRAYER - OUR DEEPEST LONGING"
Prayer is easy only for beginners and for those who are already saints. During all the long years in between, it is difficult. Why? Because prayer has the same inner dynamics as love, and love is sweet only in its initial stage, when we first fall in love, and again in its final, mature stage. In between, love is hard work, dogged fidelity, and needs wilful commitment beyond what is normally provided by our emotions and our imagination.
Prayer works in the same way. As we grow deeper and more mature in our relationship to God, just as in a relationship to someone we love, reality begins to dispel an illusion. It's not that we become disillusioned with God, but rather that we come to realize that so many of the warm thoughts and feelings we believed were about God were really about ourselves. Disillusionment is a good thing. It's dispelling of an illusion. What we thought was prayer was partly a spell of enchantment about ourselves. When that disillusionment sets in - and this a maturing moment in our lives - it is easy to believe that we were deluded about the other, the person we had fallen in love with or, in the case of prayer, God. The easy response then is to back away, to quit, to see the whole thing as having been an illusion, a false start. In the spiritual life, that's usually when we stop praying. The opposite is called for. What we need to do then is to show up, just as we did before, minus the warm thoughts and feelings: bored, uncertain and stripped of our enchantment about ourselves. The deeper we go in relationships and in prayer, the more unsure of ourselves we become, and this is the beginning of maturity.
It's when I say, "I don't know how to love," and, "I don't know how to pray," that I first begin to understand what love and prayer actually are."
- Ronald Rolheiser