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Prayer and Practicing the Presence of God

Lynne Baab • Tuesday July 4 2023

“We can ignore, but we can nowhere evade, the presence of God. The world is crowded with Him. He walks everywhere incognito.” —C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer

I read the beautiful little book, The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence, when I was in my twenties. In my memory, the book is about trying to stay aware of God’s presence in everyday life as described by C. S. Lewis above. I wanted to write a blog post about the difference — if there is one — between being aware of God’s presence and actually turning to...

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The Sabbath and prayer

Lynne Baab • Tuesday June 27 2023

John is in touch by email with friends from all over the world who work in various missions and ministries. Every time one of them sends him an email with a prayer request in it, he prints off the email and puts it in a stack on his desk. On Sundays, his Sabbath, he goes to church in the morning and in the afternoon he prays through all the requests in his stack of emails.

Sam goes to Bible Study Fellowship. He saves up all his homework for the week and does it on Sunday afternoon, his Sabbath. He knows that’s not...

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Worship services, spiritual friends, and prayer

Lynne Baab • Tuesday June 20 2023

The children have come forward. One of our talented leaders, Lisa, has brought her brother to help with this children’s time. “Did you ever want to be a superhero?” Lisa asks her brother. They banter back and forth about the superheroes they wanted to be and the superpowers they wanted to have.

Lisa asks the kids, “Which superpower would you like to have?” One kid says she would like to fly, and another mentions seeing through walls. Lisa says that Jesus had superpowers, and he used them for the purpose of love. We, too, she says, can use the power we have...

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Praying about the emotions of hospitality

Lynne Baab • Tuesday June 13 2023

“Hospitality . . . is a feeling: genuine, welcoming, generous, restorative, safe. —Bethany Jean Clement, Seattle Times staff writer

I captured that quotation because I loved the list of descriptors the author uses. I thought her words were marvelous fuel for prayers about being hospitable. However, the more I thought about it, the more questions I had.

One way to look at this quotation is that Clement is describing the feelings evoked in the person receiving hospitality. However, those feelings usually also a play a role for the giver of hospitality.

Before I dive deeper into the questions the quotation raised for me, let me...

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