Brother Lawrence, a Christian mystic, suggests that the practice of the presence of God involves the realization that we're constantly under God's gaze. It includes a daily determination to be sensitized to God all around us, to be aware of his sovereignty, to be submitted to his authority. It involves the realization that God loves us, delights in us, and desires a close, personal relationship with us. It's a life of Coram Deo, in the presence of God, one in which we are constantly aware of God's saving actions on our behalf, and one in which our day-to-day actions become nothing less than acts of service to God.
Through this growing awareness and activity, we move ever closer to enjoying no degree of separation.
The saints of God are those who are standing before the throne and before the Lamb, in this life and in the life to come. They are a group of ordinary people - past, present and future - who have an extraordinarily close relationship with God. They are not perfectly sinless people, nor are they especially powerful people, but they are profoundly connected people: men and women who are linked directly to God and to the Lamb, Jesus Christ. This makes them stand out in a world well-known for six or 60 or 600 degrees of separation.
