Prayer is powerful. Prayer is the only means to awaken a soul to God. If prayer can make one see God, what can't it do?
Gifts cannot be earned. They can only be given freely. This is how God gives His Gifts. You cannot earn a blessing from God; you will never be pure enough to match the divine will; God made us this way. It is better to be weak. God loves to lift you. God is waiting for you to be weak and crawl to Him, that you might see Him, that He might show you His highest Self. If you do not approach God helplessly, that which thinks it is strong[er than God] will make you blind. Why else do we suffer? That we might learn the sweetness in suffering, the absolute nothingness of our smaller selves, and absolute surrender to our Father.
I surrender again and again. It is a daily practice. We can never be strong. We can only be weak with God; only in our weakness can God work through us. Only by our humility can we follow His path.
It is dangerous to say "I am God." To be God is not to be powerful, but to be Love. To be beyond self. To be the wholeness in all things. To have God's wholeness, there must be endless sacrifice until the very word sacrifice becomes irrelevant, because all things bring joy.
I've always thought of sacrifice as letting go of something lower for something higher. It's just that I don't always see that until later, from hindsight.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that one reaches a point where there is so much joy from sacrifice that one does not even consider it sacrifice. Sometimes I still struggle with sacrifice instead of surrendering to the joy.
Our parents so often are our first and foremost representation of God. My father was a difficult man. He wanted to give me everything I wanted, but he was also a con-man who when things were tough would sell out from under me whatever he had given me. He also had a raging temper. He never hit me but just his verbal abuse terrified me. I have to constantly struggle with that ingrained view of authority and realize the unlimited and unconditional love of God.
I think everyone struggles with sacrifice... I certainly do. Small sacrifices are easy, letting someone go in front of me in line, giving money, giving time, having patience, etc. All of these are little sacrifices. But then I ask myself... what about the big sacrifices, or the ones we don't always think about? What if Christ came to my door and asked me to leave behind everything I owned? Could I? What about my hopes and dreams... if God asked me to leave all of those behind and follow Him instead, could I? And what about the plans I look forward to with God... if God's plans turn out not to be my plans, will that shake my faith?
ReplyDeletePerhaps a sign that we have "followed God" is to hold no bitterness inside of us for what has come of our lives....
So far I have been forced to rely on my faith a lot, and God has always come through... but I think submission to God has helped me come to terms with losing my parents a lot faster than some. I accept that this is what God has planned.
I was lucky to have a very loving father, who sacrificed daily for me... so when I think of God and I think of my father, they don't seem so far apart. God showed me unconditional love... but we could say that my father helped to preserve it in me.
I like that idea that our parents are our first and foremost representation of God... who they are becomes us, which we then must overcome... and the majority of our lives are spent wondering who we are in relation to our parents and God. When thinking of it from God's perspective, it's all quite brilliant. There is no facet of life that is not meant to teach us about God. We just have to see it.