Most everyone has experienced those rare moments when God seems very close, very real to us on a direct and even personal level. G.K. Chesterton once described this poetically as when a person with their eyes closed is suddenly aware that someone has walked quietly by them – they are dimly aware of the vibration of the other person walking and the wind as the other person’s clothes flutter in the breeze.
But for some it seems that they are made aware of Him or reminded of His presence in an active and even personal way through people, events and even “things” which we suddenly become aware of, either in the present or the past. We suddenly become aware of how we have been taken care of, and in a personal way. As C.S. Lewis once put it when something like that happens we usually respond not by saying “Who are you?” but rather “So … it was you all along.”
This direct action has been called by several names for millennia, but is often referred to simply as God’s Providence, and perhaps one of the most important “aims” of these movements (in the sense of what God hopes that they bring out of us) is an awareness of His constant personal care for us as individuals coupled with a direct response of what St. Paisios of Mt. Athos would call “responsive gratefulness”.
Sometimes either out of these responses (or even side by side?) comes another … well … almost like a question – perhaps from God, perhaps from the conscience, or any number of elements interacting together, and that is “Why has God shown this to me?” These sort of questions should hopefully always be practical ones and not sterile intellectual gymnastics nor occasions for puffing oneself up in either crude or subtle ways.
For some they become “trained” to think like this as a result of being blessed – perhaps as a true mercy – of catching glimpses of God’s Providence working in their lives over the course of decades or several years (Elder John Krestyankin spoke of this a means through which God conveys His will to us, for example), and maybe that route is a good one as it does not predispose us to somehow carry with it that jagged, impatient surge of “I must figure this out NOW.”
I have heard one way to respond to these kinds of ponderings that poke up alongside the moments of responsive gratefulness is how they can be considered in the light of Christ’s parable of the talents. God shows us His care through circumstances, pleasant, unpleasant, unexpected, and the rest. God blesses us with a moment of awareness of beauty or meaning or inspiration. God moves our emotions or our soul or perhaps something deeper in us. What then?
There are general ways we can react, of course, so we are never “helpless” or without a means of “giving back” somehow, but what specifically does He wish we do with such a movement of His Providence? How do we respond in both a general way and a specific way?
Again though, none of this is merely an intellectual exercise. It is rather like learning a new language – a sort of minuscule beginning of “getting used” to how God speaks, acts, and moves, both in the lives of others and with our own heart … and eventually at the deepest core of our being. It is a living and active language, one that is “interesting” on some of our deepest levels, one that is filled with “movement”, yes, but movement of gratitude that almost “crushes” one, being humbled in the light of how greatly we are loved and how poorly we “give back” – a movement towards a Someone.
And for me it seems the Fasts of the Church, especially the Great Fast, are opportunities given to us to focus on one’s first priorities to better enable us to both plant our feet more firmly in a “better place”, that we might begin to better re-orientate oneself on how to become the sort of creature we are supposed to … that we might be able to start to really listen, to respond, to move, and even to respond from the depth of our mind and heart as we ought.
Please forgive my mode of “thinking aloud” here – I wish I could express it better!