“Seek God, not where God lives,” write the Desert Monastics.

The search for God comes one day to the point where we know without a doubt that we are immersed in God. Bringing ourselves to finally recognize that is the essential task of life.

There is no such thing as “getting” God. The fact is that we already have God. God is not somewhere else. God is everywhere. God is here. With me. In me. Now. It is the awareness of that presence which life intends to teach us to cultivate.

There’s nothing wrong with feeling that God is absent. Then, at least, we know that our soul is alive and going in the right direction. The God of Light is also the God of Darkness. Why would we not expect God, then, to be in the dark spots of our lives as well as in its light?

To be centered in God alone does not mean to have no interests but God. It means to realize that all other interests are meant to bring us closer to God. They are not meant to take God’s place in our lives but to enable God’s spirit to enhance the meaning of everything else.

The point at which we look beyond ourselves is where we find God in the rest of the world. Then life spills over with the wonder of God. Then we find the fullness of the Spirit for which we have been searching.

Once we begin to recognize God at work in us, everything in life becomes holy, becomes life-giving. Then God is not an occasional find in life—in church, maybe, or at a sunset. God is a sense of life now and of life beyond life. God is what calls me to live into the heart of the universe.

—from Aspects of the Heart (Twenty-Third Publications) by Joan Chittister