Just This: Prompts and Practices for Contemplation

by Richard Rohr

no problem to solve If you watch your mind, you will see you live most of your life in the past or in the future. The present always seems boring and not enough. So, to get yourself engaged, you will often “create a problem” to resolve, and then another, and another. The only way many people know how to motivate themselves is to create problems or to need to “fix” something. If you can’t be positively present right now, without creating a problem, nothing new is ever going to happen to you. You will only experience what you already agree with and what does not threaten you—and you will never experience the unexpected depth and contentment that is always being offered to you. Notice that the Scriptures present God as a thief, or a master who returns before being expected (see Matthew 24:42–46), who even “puts on an apron, sits them at table and waits on them” (see Luke 12:35–38)! Do you realize what an extraordinary notion of God Jesus must have had to talk that way? God waiting on us! No problem to solve; just an immediate intimacy to enjoy. It is just such a moment that can elicit both awe and surrender from you: awe before the utterly undeserved and unexpected—and some sweet surrender to the fact that it might just be true.