This is a summarised passage from Gerard W. Hughes’ book “Oh God, Why?” For those of who find meditation challenging: the stillness offering time to worry.
It is interesting to note how our thinking mind will not allow us to concentrate on the immediate present, but rather is constantly drawing us into the future or the past. We then begin to see how destructive of life this habit is, because we only give a fraction of our attention to the immediate present, which is the only reality we have at the moment. The past is gone; the future not yet so we tend to spend most of our time escaping from reality.
A very good penance for Lent would be to try and live as fully as possible in the present moment.
God is where we are, and there is no other place where we can find him. This is an obvious truth which we so often forget in practice, putting God out there, or in the church or some other holy place.
What is God’s will for you now? It is precisely where you are at this moment. This does not mean we have to stay where we are and as we are. Our feelings of discontent are his nudgings, encouraging us either to change our situation or change the way we perceive it. The only way we can find him is by starting from where we are, otherwise we are like the person, who on being asked directions to a village began with, “If I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”