God and Polar Bears
Courtesy of Becoming Human:“People, like animals, do not pay attention to what exists in excessive abundance, but only open their eyes before what is rare or exceptional. There is too much of You, O Lord, my breath, therefore people do not see You. You are too obvious, O Lord, my sighing, therefore the attention of people is diverted from You and directed toward polar bears, toward rarities in the distance.”
-- St Nikolai (Velimirović) of Ochrid and Zica (Prayers by the Lake, Prayer 7)
posted by Matthew Francis at Friday, December 01, 2006
3 Comments:
This is an amazing post. I can not wrap my mind around "too much God."
I need to go be silent.
Some pondering thoughts...
We do not always have our eyes open to the abundance of God in our lives. It is as though there is a veil over those things in which God is so present in, to protect us from the overwhelming sense of God in EVERYTHING. It is interesting that St. Nikolai talks about God’s abundance in our breath and how that abundance causes us “to not see Him” and in our sighing, that His “presence is too obvious” so our attention is diverted outside ourselves to something so far from us like a polar bear. It is easy to look at amazing rare things that are distant from us and see God and His greatness, but to see God in the things we take for granted, the things we experience daily is truly a good thing!
It is interesting, St. Nikolai is pondering upon God’s closeness to us and how sometimes even though His presence is so close to us and even IN us, our attention is diverted to those things far away from us. Almost as though this outward attention may actually bring our focus back to the presence of God in our lives. One can only hope that it does, otherwise what good is it to be diverted outside ourselves? This “excessive abundance” that already exists, I think, is about being present to God who is always present in our lives and having an awareness of that presence. We are fortunate that God made the world and all the things that are in it. Mountains may remind me of His presence and the goodness of His creation, but does my taking a breath in every moment of every day cause me to be reminded of that very same thing?
We must be thankful for our breath, our heart beat and to be aware that there is the same amount of God in one mere breath as there is in a huge polar bear.
Thanks for this post!
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