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Gary G. Hoag
“One thing I ask from the Lord, this only do I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze on the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.”— Psalm 27:4
“Contemplation is the highest expression of man's intellectual and spiritual life. It is that life itself, fully awake, fully active, fully aware that it is alive. It is spiritual wonder. It is spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life, of being. It is gratitude for life, for awareness and for being. It is a vivid realization of the fact that life and being in us proceed from an invisible, transcendent and infinitely abundant Source. Contemplation is, above all, awareness of the reality of that Source. It knows the Source, obscurely, inexplicably, but with a certitude that goes both beyond reason and beyond simple faith.
Contemplation reaches out to the knowledge and even to the experience of the transcendent and inexpressible God. It knows God by seeming to touch Him.. Or rather it knows Him as if it had been invisibly touched by Him. Touched by Him Who has no hands, but Who is pure Reality and the source of all that is real! Hence contemplation is a sudden gift of awareness, an awakening to the Real within all that is real. A vivid awareness of infinite Being at the roots of our own limited being. An awareness of our contingent reality as received, as a present from God, as a free gift of love.”
Thomas Merton (1915-1968) in New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1979) 1-2.
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Merton was an ordinary person who did some extraordinary writing. How? He blocked time to be with God in solitude. For example, he said this book “wrote itself almost automatically in the monastery.”
Thankfully, we don’t have to live in a monastery to contemplate. All we need to do is make God the one thing we seek. When we do, we experience awe, wonder, and gratitude for life.
The God Who has no hands touches us. The infinite touches the finite and envelops us with the free gift of love. We tap the infinitely abundant Source. This is not lofty thinking. It is the most down to earth.
As David was also a contemplative, our Scriptures this week will come from his Psalms. In so doing, we will discover the secret to David’s generosity. He knew personally the infinitely abundant Source.
Father in heaven, turn us all into contemplatives this week as we make you the “one thing” we seek. Do this by your Holy Spirit. Awaken the Real within all that is real, I ask in the name of Jesus. Amen.
I preach two sermons at two churches today in Accra, Ghana. One on Matthew 25:14-30 and one on Luke 6:20-26. Pray for God to prepare hearts to receive the Word and for me to speak truth in love.
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