can you see me now?

The big take-away from this year’s Grace Retreat was that we can develop our God-sight, resulting in more God-sightings.

Dave Evans gave us a couple of tools to help us develop our God-sight: the prayer of examen and the lectio divina. They’re simple tools. “Examen” is just a fancy word for a 10 minute reflection on where God has been most present or absent in our day (or half-day if you do the examen twice a day). And we did a “divine reading” of the story of Jesus healing the blind man Bartimaeus in Mark 10, i.e., Dave read the passage slowly out loud 4 times and God spoke to us. Pretty simple.

Simple is good. These are things that we can do every day. One website suggests that couples could do the examen together, which sounds like a great way of getting to know each other by hearing from the other person how God has been present or absent in her/his life.

My prayer is that this retreat will have more of an impact than just being a pleasant memory. Not that I have anything against pleasant memories, but Dave has given us some time-honored ways to develop our God-sight that I pray will become a part of our individual and community prayer life. (If you don’t have a copy of these tools, let me know and I’ll email you his handouts.)

The result will be more God-sightings. And who knows where that will lead? Better yet, who knows where He will lead?