Stumbling over the presence of God

There was a time in my life when I read a lot. I would read up to four books a week.
When I started reading Christian literature I found a book mention several times by different authors, it was called "Practicing the presence of God". Just the title interested me so I finally bought a copy. I still have that copy and as yet I have not made it through it. I've made several attempts but I just can't make it. I have discovered that I just can't get through several books that people consider Christian classics. I'm not sure why that is but it doesn't really matter. the title of the book "Practicing the presence of God" was what got me thinking and going. I found that when I practice the presence of God, really acting and believing that He is right beside me and that I have His full attention at all times that my life is truly peaceful and joyful. I found the Bibles admonition to pray continuously to just be a natural part of my life because I was talking to God about anything and everything. I wish I had continued to practice His presence but some how I let that practice fall into disuse. But God is always faithful (Semper Fi), He continues to trip me up and whisper in my ear so that I will notice His presence. I continually stumble over the presence of God.

HeyGuy

For New Years we had our prayer group over to our house for a year end get together. We ate together then played are you smarter than a fifth grader. It took us a whole five minutes to figure out we weren't, so we quit and went on to discussion and prayer. Elaine read a part of a book called "Eat this book" which described some passages from the Bible and how we should really chew on the words in the Bible and taste them and really enjoy them. Then Iman read a passage from Haggai and we ended up reading the whole book and discussing it. The book brought a lot of visuals to my mind as it was read aloud and started my brain to thinking about a lot of things. One of the visuals I got was how much time, energy and money I spend on how I look and how I appear to others and how little time I actually spend devouring, tasting and enjoying the Word. Another thought that occurred to me was that Haggai was a really good book for me because it fir my attention span. I looked in my Bible and discovered that close to half the books of the Bible are designed for those of us with short attention spans. They are less than ten pages long in my large print Bible including notes. Books for those with attention deficit. I think I will start with the books for ADD and devour those and taste them and maybe by the time I finish those I'll be ready for those that are wordier. I hope and pray that I can keep my attention on track to start and continue doing that this year. I also realised that there is a lot more to the scripture that says hear the word because, at least for me there is something to listening to the word being read out loud. It seems to add more to it than just silently reading it to myself. I know that in the Jewish religion they they read through the old testament each year and in Catholic masses they read through the Bible every three years. I guess they know something I never paid attention to before, something I'm going to try more often this year.