The Source of Life: Understanding Our Deepest Need for God
From my breath, I extract God.
And my eye is a shop
Where I offer Him to the world.
-Thomas Aquinas
Through God’s gift of life, a personal relationship with Him is our birthright. He has always been part of us - hidden and covered, deep within our hearts. He has always been in the beauty of the present moment. However, our minds distract us from our journeys inward to experience Him. We are dazzled by fancy colors, shapes and outside distractions that tempt us with thoughts of a future day when we might have much more than we have now. These journeys outward lead us away from the present moment where we find Him - away from the stillness of the open, receptive heart space inside us. All the while, within that empty space our hearts call to us. We ignore that call until we feel suffering, pain and distress. Then - and only then - do we feel desperate enough to protect the emptiness. Our suffering calls us to fill that space with something meaningful and unseen, rather than stuff it full of distracting and fleeting diversions.
Without God we are at the mercy of an insecure mind that allows a storm to twist and tear us into pieces. Without Him, humanity has no anchor, no hope - nothing to rely upon but what it calls “fate.” Without God, we have no guide or captain of the ship other than a mind that relies upon its own limited perceptions and stories. This mortal chaos is far bigger than our small minds can navigate. What do we do?
Quite simply, we turn to God. We listen intently to His voice. Though He is invisible, by listening to Him we rely on what flourishes only within our hearts - faith. No other leader can shepherd us to greener pastures of health. No other leader can know our hearts so well and understand how our minds mislead us. There is no one, other than God, who can help us to exist in freedom and love in the present moment and bring us to a safer tomorrow.
May you learn to turn to Him in conversation that you hear and follow through the rest of your days. And may you forever exist in Him and with Him, listening to the words of His dream for you. For surely our minds have gotten us to a place of pain in this current world, and only God knows our way out.
At this point in our evolution, may we finally know to turn to God - may we know to call to Him with questions and, from within the empty space we have created, receive His guidance. By giving some of our inner space over to God, we send a signal to Him that we are ready to begin a perfect relationship with Him - one that will deepen as we converse with Him and hear His voice. It is then, amid a world of fragments, that we find the missing piece of ourselves. We shall grow in to wholeness and become who we are meant to be.
-Frannie Rose