Jesus often told stories. Stories are how we make sense of the world, and they are also how God gives us a sense of his presence in the world.

There are many ways of listening to God. One of the most important is praying with the Scriptures. (Read this easy guide to begin praying with the Scriptures through Lectio Divina.)  Yet many of the saints prayed with a text that was not a book—they prayed with the “book of their life”—all the circumstances that made up their lives. If God truly is everywhere, then wouldn’t he most especially be found in the lives of his beloved ones?

What is your story? How has God been at work in your life? In his book on discernment, Marko Ivan Rupnik says:

“Discernment is the art of the spiritual life in which I understand how God communicates himself to me, how God saves me—and this is the same thing—how God brings about redemption through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, and how the Holy Spirit communicates to me the salvation won for me by Jesus Christ.  Discernment is an art, therefore, in which the realities in creation, the realities in the persons around me, the realities within me, and the realities in my personal history and history itself cease being mute in order to begin to communicate to me God’s love” (Discernment: Acquiring the Heart of God, p. 17).