SL02-06 From Quid Pro Quo to Abiding Presence

We've heard a lot about quid pro quo in the news cycles these days.  All this talk about the funding to the Ukraine allegedly being tied up and not released unless the Ukraine leader investigated the Bidens helped me to realize just how often we fall into the same pattern with our prayer life to God.  Our prayers become, "God please heal Janie, please help me make ends meet, please help me forgive, etc….." and may go on to be "if you do this, I promise I will do…."  We tend to only communicate with God when we have time to make the requests or to bargain with God or question God and the rest of the time we may not give much attention or awareness to God's presence. God wants us to live in an abiding presence relationship.  We see that in the creation story of the Garden of Eden where God, Adam and Eve and the angels and creation all dwelt together in harmony and in a close and personal relationship with each other. One of the passages of the Hebrew scriptures that most exemplifies the abiding presence that God wants to have in each of our lives is in the 23rd Psalm, the Lord is My Shepherd psalm. I thought we'd imaginally pray the 23rd Psalm in order to help us remember that we each cary and reflect a spark of the Divine within us and that the relationship God calls each of us to is to have an abiding presence, a dwelling presence, a Sh'khinah relationship with each and every one of us.