How much time each day do you spend thinking about God and His interaction with your life and the world around? Just consider it. Five minutes? An hour? More? It would be interesting to find some way of measuring it down to the minute. If we could, one thing that would be discovered, is that those who spend the most time pondering our Lord, will also be those people who have the strongest relationship with Him.
The question we want to ask is, "which feeds which?" Does thinking about God strengthen our relationship to Him, or does a strong relationship with Him help us to think about Him? Technically, it is both; it goes both ways, because that is the nature of holiness. The lesson is clear: if you want a stronger relationship with the Lord, then spend more time thinking about Him (our forefathers used to call it "meditating").
Now, we all know that there are some things in life that make it harder to think about God, and there are other things that help us to think about Him. Naturally, we would want to avoid those things that prevent it and seek those things that help it; but we do not always do that. The problem is that many of those things that make it harder to think about God are "fun" (at least initially). As I have pointed out before, the very word "amusement" means "mindlessness" (what an interesting thing to realize!). To go through your day and rarely think about our Lord, is a form of practical atheism; it is like a denial of His existence!
Yet, there are some things that force us away from holy meditations that we can easily avoid, and those should be dealt with quickly (maybe even before you finish reading this post). Consider this: the more time you spend talking or thinking about the world without any reference to God, the easier it is to forget God, it makes Him seem irrelevant and absent from your life. This is one of the biggest problems with the schools becoming "public"; it forced God out of the picture, and created an educational system that encourages children to learn about the world without reference to God (imagine being told to go through the day thinking like an atheist!). As people today work to isolate reference to God from the public sphere, we cannot ignore this and let it happen to our minds as well.
Comparatively, the more time you spend thinking about and experiencing the presence of God (especially in the Sacrament) the more you can recognize his activity in the world. Certainly this means our ordinary thoughts and ideas, but it also means that we need to be doing extra work to remind ourselves of God's place in things. Reading stories about the lives of the Saints and reading the Scriptures are obvious ways. We can also think about how we read the news (assuming that you do). Do we examine current events in light of the work of God in the world?
Has your faith maybe gotten a bit bland lately? Has your passion for the Lord diminished and the spiritual disciplines seem to have little attraction to you? It is likely because you have let God "wander" from your heart and mind. You will not be able to return to the "joy of our salvation" unless you first restore the Lord to center place in your soul. When we love something strongly, we seek after strongly as well.
When a man is in love with a woman, he will have her often come into his thoughts. He will get all dreamy about her; her hair, her eyes, her voice, etc. If we love God as we are called to (in heart, soul, and mind), then He will come into our thoughts often. We will remember the wonderful things that He has done for us (without having to be reminded of them). This will lead us to praying to Him more frequently as well, and thus our relationship with the Lord will grow. This is the reason why Catholics wear a crucifix, and keep images and prayer cards around or near them: to remind them of the great work of God. Let us make sure that we do not allow anything to make us forget Him.
