In our gospel passage, we hear Peter say, “. . . it is good for us to be here.” It is good for us to be here, here and now in the Presence of the Holy One. Here and now is always the place of revelation. It could be on a high mountain as it was for Peter, James and John in our lesson today, or it could be in the kitchen washing dishes or peeling potatoes as the 17^(th) century Carmelite Brother Lawrence testified. God is no respecter of time or place but ever waits for us to be open and available, alert to and aware of what is going on here and now, all around us, right before our eyes.

It is in the present moment that we may experience the Beloved’s presence. God is always here, but we may not be. We may be fretting over what happened yesterday, who hurt our feelings, made us angry, let us down, or how we messed up. Or we might be dreaming--or worrying--about our plans for the future, what we can accomplish, what success or failure will look like, where we will be when our ship comes in. Should this be the case, and I suspect it is for many of us much of the time, a good Lenten discipline would be to notice where our attention lies, what we focus on through the day, what veils our awareness and keeps us in the dark. Another one would be to cultivate an attitude of expectation for God’s revelation in our lives and to look for manifestations of the Divine in the world around us.

“The Practice of the Presence of God,” as Brother Lawrence’s spiritual practice is called, opens our eyes and our ears and our hearts to experience the Divine Reality of God’s Love enfolding and indwelling us here and now.