Stillness and silence

‘Exactly one month ago we celebrated Emmanuel – God with us; God revealed to us in the birth of Jesus.  After his death and resurrection, in Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus promises his disciples that he will be with them until the end of the age.

But is the nearness of God and Jesus’ promise to never leave us the experience of our everyday ordinary lives? Is God’s presence among and within us in the way that Jesus described the Kingdom of God, experienced as fleeting; something we catch a glimpse of from time to time, but long to experience more deeply?  In his writings on prayer in Christian life, Martin Laird, an American priest, professor and monk of the order of St Augustine, says that most of us experience a sense of absence or distance from God, and that this separation is one of the biggest illusions of the human condition.  He goes on to say that humans are in fact built for contemplation:  communion with God in the silence of the heart is a God-given capacity, like the rhododendron’s capacity to flower, the bird’s capacity for flight, and the child’s capacity for joy.’  

The Christian tradition of contemplation is experiencing a renewal across all denomination as more and more people long to experience the quiet yet transformational power of Emmanuel, God with us, more deeply in their lives. Central to this tradition are practices of stillness and silence, through various forms of meditation and prayer. The message from the pew this Sunday evening will explore these themes and encourage people to ‘dive deeper’ into the Good News of God with us, in us and among us’.

Hope that you can join us for what will obviously be a rich time of reflection and conversation

Leesl Wegner is a member of Brunswick Uniting Church, the World Community for Christian Meditation and a Flemington local.