September 14, 2026

· Seeking God’s presence within

· True prayer is directed within

· Brief moments of indescribable peace and light

The God to whom you pray, both with praise and supplication, is very much a part of who you are. We speak so often of that presence being around you, but it is important to realize that that presence is not some kind of external entity but rather is a power of spirit that lies wholly within you, within all people.

All human beings are gifted with the power to see with the spirit. It is not seeing with the eyes. It is not seeing with the intellect. It is not seeing with any of the normally identified senses belonging to human life. It is an ability to see on a spiritual level. Recognizing that all human beings have this capability, we must also say that only a small portion of humankind exercises this ability in a conscious and lovingly meaningful way.

The God you seek, the Presence that you seek, exists within you. In a way this is a kind of self-knowledge, but it is not a knowledge of the mind but a knowledge of the heart. It is a knowledge that leads you to reach outward, to reach out in help to others. Your ability to be sensitive to the needs of other humans comes not from an intellectual organizing principle, but in the end, most meaningly, it comes from the heart. It comes from the spirit.

When you open your heart, when you open the spirit, it is then that you can reach outward in the most meaningful ways. You don’t reach to another out of obligation. Yes, you can do things for others, but that is not the same. The reaching out that we speak of is not based on what it is you do; rather, it is about the motivation.

Reaching out as a means of sensing God’s presence is actually a natural response. It is not motivated by the need to feel good about yourself. It is done only for the purpose of expressing a loving connection to another. When that loving connection exists, the outreach is a natural response, and it is when that response becomes oriented toward another and not toward the self in some way that you begin to more clearly feel that presence within.

Seeing God is not seeing a figure. Seeing God is being open to the evidence of God. You do not see love, but you see the evidence of love, and it is with that recognition that you are truly seeing the God within.

So many religions of the world traditionally reach out to God for peace, for direction, as if they were looking for a strength to come to them, a strength they don’t have, an insight they do not recognize. Such a relationship to an understanding of God is that God is somehow out there, and it is up to the human condition to reach out and ask, to reach out and request. Think of the wording of so many prayers. It is almost as if you were praying to a power that lies beyond you in some indeterminate location. But true prayer, prayer that is directed most meaningfully to God, is a prayer that is not directed elsewhere but instead is directed to self. If you pray for wisdom, that wisdom is within, and it is only to be unlocked and exercised, given life, given light. If you pray for peace or the end of conflict between people and nations, that peace, that relief from conflict is not somehow brought to you in a somewhat mysterious way, and suddenly you see peace evolving.

The real peace is the peace within. It is in your efforts to find peaceful ways of interacting with others that the peace you pray for becomes a reality. Conflict belongs to the human experience, and it is through your interaction with those elements that create conflict that you evolve into a more caring and therefore understanding presence, and you become the agent for peace that you seek.

What we are saying is that whatever you are truly praying for exists within you. It is not something bestowed on you. It is something which emanates from you. Granted, there are prayers that are self-directed. There are those who pray for greater success, greater influence, greater authority, more impact, more respect, but those prayers are really not about those items. Those prayers are actually prayers for a sense of self-worth, self-respect, and from that self-respect, a growing respect for others. People who feel very incomplete pray for what they perceive could fill that void, but within those prayers is the reality of a desire to connect to the possibility of that void being filled from within.

No human being of any age can only find fulfillment when it is bestowed upon them by any number of conditions. That true fulfillment comes from within. It emanates forward from a connection to what they already have. For those who feel they are not loved and appreciated, and they seek to fill that void, the true resolution is to acknowledge that no one is unlovable. No one is incapable of being loving, and when you are loving toward another, truly loving in an unselfish and giving way, you will never feel inadequate or sense the need for something more important. You will feel as if a life is indeed reflective of something far greater that lies within. One cannot feel diminished when one sees with strength within.

Yes, of course, there are times when you feel defeated, when you feel discouraged, when you experience fear and anxiety, but filling those needs is achieved by recognizing who and why you really are. Then that gap is diminished and life contains all that is fully necessary. When you reach out in prayer to God for a response to whatever concerns you, never feel that there is something you must do to receive what is asked for, for there is nothing that you as human beings can do to deserve God’s presence, but there is everything you can do to seek evidence on your own of that presence which is always with you.

The words that are used to seek God are unimportant. In fact, they often hide what is truly needed. All of this is to emphasize that whatever you pray for in words is actually an invitation for your own openness to what is present. God works through you. God works through others. That is the connection to God, and all the trappings belonging to specific prayers are only so many clothes that cover an individual. They are not the individual. They are only a representation. What you pray for is only a reference to what it is you really need. If you pray for what benefits you, you are really praying for a recognition of all you are to yourself. Such essential prayer may not be expressed specifically in terms of self-awareness, but that is essentially what is behind all prayers.

You are asked to seek God wherever that presence may be, but in the asking, you are really seeking God as a presence of wherever you are as a human being. You acknowledge a beautiful sunset and may say, “Ah, that is evidence of God’s beauty,” but it wasn’t the sunset that was evidence. It was your openness to the sunset that was God’s presence. So, you are asked in all that you do to find God wherever you are, and in so doing, you are seeing God wherever you may be because God is always within you.

Sometimes that presence is felt momentarily as a feeling of indescribable peace and a sense of light. It may only last a couple of seconds, but suddenly there is a specialness to what you are experiencing that can only be described as the presence of God. Such moments do not happen often, and they can’t be planned ahead of time. It is just this momentary flash of recognition, and when that flash is perceived, all that exists around you feels immensely sacred.

It is that glimpse of God because of what is inside. It wasn’t the beauty of the sunset per se. It was how you encountered what was experienced. Find God, therefore, inside wherever you may be. Find that view of God that may exist for a brief moment, but in that moment, you are changed, you are transformed, and you will be filled with a sense of completeness, a sense of connection to the entire world around you. It is in that heart vision, that connection, that you truly see the presence within, not with the eyes, not with the intellect, but through the heart, your heart vision.

All human beings have the potential of exercising such heart vision, and those who have experienced such visions of the heart are in a unique position to live their lives in a way that give evidence of God to those around them. Be loving toward one another. Be patient, be peaceful, and seek always to be the light for which you pray.

Amen.