We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

4770499332_ac37414e1e

Supported by God

Here’s an exercise that has helped me experience God’s closeness and helped me feel “at home” regardless of my circumstances. It involves using the incredible gift of your physical body to help you remember God’s ever-present love and care for you.

Think for a moment about the way God designed the world and the laws of nature to support you. Unless you’re living in a zero-gravity environment, your body is always in contact with something and is always being supported in multiple ways. For example, at this moment your feet are probably being supported by the floor and your body is probably resting on a chair or sofa. When you lie down tonight, your body will be supported by your bed. Your skin is always touching some other part of the physical world, and that touch can be transformed into a little signal from the Father that he is watching over you and caring for you.

In this moment, turn your attention to the points of contact between your body and the things that are supporting your weight. Become aware of the weight of your body against the chair, your feet against the floor, and so on…. Allow yourself to rest in that support and realize that every point of contact reflects the truth that you are held in existence each and every moment by the perfect love of God (Hebrews 1:3). God is personally holding you securely in the world. He cares that you have places to rest. Throughout your day, turn your attention over and over again to these physical points of contact and transform those physical sensations into a deeper awareness of the great love of God.

Engaging in this discipline, I have found that I feel much more at home in the world because my continual contact with the world has become a sacrament communicating to me I’m always at home in God’s loving presence.

– Present Perfect: Finding God in the Now by Greg Boyd, pages 55-56

Image by atmtx via Flickr

Related Reading

Do My Prayers Matter?

We talked about the risk God took in creating the world as he did (see previous post). The choices made by humans and spiritual agents influence what transpires in history. This sets the stage for an understanding of how our prayers have influence on what actually happens in the world. To make this point, I…

Tags:

Podcast: Does God Love Satan?

Greg talks about the potential of Satan repenting. A great question by Matthew!  http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0412.mp3

If Judgment is the Opposite of Love, How Can God Judge? (podcast)

Greg considers how God’s judgment differs from our own, making it an expression of his love. Whereas, for us, judgment stands contrary to our love.  Episode 488 http://traffic.libsyn.com/askgregboyd/Episode_0488.mp3

Showing Up

Jonathan Kos-Read via Compfight Shauna Niequist over at  Donald Miller’s Storyline blog shared some thoughts on Why You Should Stop Waiting for Life to be Perfect. She points out that sometimes this waiting for perfection gets in the way of noticing the goodness that is already here for you. Show up to your life today, even…

Terror in the Night

I’ll never forget the night it first happened to me. I was thirteen, sharing a bedroom with my older brother. I woke up in the middle of the night and felt as if something was pinning me to the bed, choking me, and electrocuting me, all at the same time.   The wind was blowing through…

If God is already doing the most he can do, how does prayer increase his influence?

Question: If God always does the most that he can in every tragic situation, as you claim in Satan and the Problem of Evil,  how can you believe that prayer increases his influence, as you also claim?  It seems if you grant that prayer increases God’s influence, you have to deny God was previously doing…