{"id":19852,"date":"2021-02-19T09:46:49","date_gmt":"2021-02-19T14:46:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19852"},"modified":"2021-02-19T10:29:39","modified_gmt":"2021-02-19T15:29:39","slug":"the-givenness-of-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=19852","title":{"rendered":"The \u201cGivenness of God\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/in1uxSpvsw0\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>To Jesus, God was Creator of\nlife and the living substance, the Living Stream upon which all things moved,\nthe Mind containing time, space, and all their multitudinous offspring. And\nbeyond all these, He was Friend and Father.<\/em>&nbsp;\u2014Howard Thurman, <em>Disciplines of the Spirit<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>The work of theologian Howard Thurman was\nheavily influenced by his own mystical experiences. From a very young age, he\nfelt God\u2019s real and loving presence, whether he was on the water, in the\ngarden, or looking up at the night sky. He knew he lived in a safe and sacred\nuniverse and this Big-T Truth became the foundation of all of his teaching.\nLike Jesus, the mystics, and all great teachers, Thurman takes what is personal\nand makes it universal. Walter&nbsp;Brueggemann&nbsp;calls this \u201cthe scandal of\nparticularity.\u201d [1] We \u201cget it\u201d in one ordinary, concrete moment and wrestle\nand fall in love with it there. It\u2019s a scandal precisely because it\u2019s so\nordinary. What is true in one place finally ends up being true\neverywhere.&nbsp;In this passage, Thurman applies this youthful lesson to\nprayer: <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>One night I was awakened by my mother, who\nasked if I would like to see the comet [Halley\u2019s Comet]. I got up, dressed\nquickly, and went out with her into the back yard. There I saw in the heavens\nthe awesome tail of the comet and stood transfixed. With deep anxiety I asked,\nwithout taking my eyes off it, \u201cWhat will happen to us when that thing falls\nout of the sky?\u201d There was a long silence during which I felt the gentle\npressure of her fingers on my shoulders; then I looked into her face and saw\nwhat I had seen on another occasion, when without knocking I had rushed into\nher room and found her in prayer. At last she said, \u201cNothing will happen to us,\nHoward. God will take care of us.\u201d In that moment something was touched and\nkindled in me, a quiet reassurance that has never quite deserted me.&nbsp;As I\nlook back on it, what I sensed then was the fact that what stirred in me was\none with what created and controlled the comet. It was this inarticulate\nawareness that silenced my fear and stilled my panic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here at once is the primary ground and basis of people\u2019s experience of prayer. I am calling it, for the purpose of this discussion, the \u201cgivenness\u00a0of God\u201d as expressed in the hunger of the heart. This is native to personality, and when it becomes part of a person\u2019s\u00a0conscious focus it is prayer\u00a0at its best and highest. It is the movement of the heart of a person toward God; a movement that in a sense is within God\u2014God in the heart sharing its life with God the Creator of all Life. The hunger itself is God, calling to God.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"500\" height=\"290\" src=\"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/image-8-500x290.png\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-19855\" srcset=\"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/image-8-500x290.png 500w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/image-8-300x174.png 300w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/image-8-768x445.png 768w, https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/image-8.png 1996w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To Jesus, God was Creator of life and the living substance, the Living Stream upon which all things moved, the Mind containing time, space, and all their multitudinous offspring. And beyond all these, He was Friend and Father.&nbsp;\u2014Howard Thurman, Disciplines of the Spirit The work of theologian Howard Thurman was heavily influenced by his own [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19852"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19852"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19856,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19852\/revisions\/19856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}