JUST LET GOD LOOK AT YOU

What would it be like to begin your day without asking anything of God?
Before the prayers.
Before the list.
Before checking your phone or rehearsing everything you need to accomplish.

Just let God look at you.

This past week we taught on an ancient Christian way of prayer called the gaze—becoming aware that before we ever go looking for God, God is already looking upon us with Love.

And then today the lectionary gives us Mary and Martha. Martha is busy with many things. Mary simply sits at the feet of Jesus.

Jesus says:

“You are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part.”
[Read today’s lectionary passage here]

I’ve been sitting with that phrase: one thing.

What is the one thing?

Throughout Scripture, it keeps coming back to Love: love God, love your neighbor, love yourself.

And maybe Mary shows us where that Love begins.

Before she does anything for Jesus, she allows herself to be with Jesus.

She receives before she gives.

Maybe the “better part” is learning to let God look at us with Love so that we can leave that place looking at our neighbor—and ourselves—with that same Love.

Try it today or tomorrow morning.

Sit quietly. Feel your feet on the floor. Take a breath. Let your shoulders soften.

Then simply pray:

God, here I am. As I actually am.

No performing.
No fixing.
No trying to have the right spiritual experience.

Just let God look at you.

And then, when you get up to enter your beautiful, complicated, distracted day, ask:

Who might need me to look at them with the Love I have just received?

Receive the gaze.
Let yourself be loved.
Become the gaze of Love in the world.

With faith, hope, and especially love,
Clare  and Scott

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