“See Me in everything, for I am everywhere for all of you. . . . Oh, that look of yours that I love: you understand? It’s like a declaration of love from you, as though you gave Me a little of your soul. And I take it right away, carefully watching for a chance to pick you up like a collector of works of art who jealously hides his discoveries so that no one may steal them from him.
Bossis, Gabrielle. He and I (Kindle Locations 3285-3288). Pauline Books and Media. Kindle Edition
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Many people prefer that God be distant, far away, and not interfering in our lives at all. Others are terrified that God does exist because God is often presented as a human being written large. Yes, scary.
Religion also has a tendency to be idol makers, forming a God easy to understand, and even control. Which can be off-putting to those who are subjected to their teachings.
When reading the “He and I” book, I find the loving communications that are presented almost too much. I find myself saying, ‘Really”. The love of God is often used as a generic term. Love on a level that the individual human being is made to feel as if he is just part of a substantial segment of mankind or all of mankind, that is loved, but again in generic terms. Not really personal at.
The love of God that is presented to us by Jesus Christ can be hard to understand, and we often fall back into the mold of creating a God who can be controlled. So we have an angry, short-tempered God, quick to punish, even for eternity. Scary yes, but we can handle such a God because we understand these limitations, even if they are infinite.
Yet that is not Christianity. Christians are told not to judge, yet judging is so easy. We are told to love our neighbor, but I am not sure that has really sunk in as well. It is easy for me to sink into places far from what I believe Jesus is calling me to live out. Jesus says that he is to be seen in the least, yet, how do we actually treat those whom we consider unimportant or a bother?
I would think that the death to self that Jesus talks about, is not always what we may think it is. I believe that with the death to self that we are called to when we seek to walk that path, we become more human, less hateful, competitive, and domineering.
When people tell me that they think books like “He and I” are just sentimentally, I respond, that if we are made in the image and likeness of God, perhaps the fact that God can come across as so loving is because at bottom, we are made of love, not sentimental love, but stronger than death love. The kind of love that allowed Jesus to go through his passion, yet in the end still loved and forgave. Now that is what it means to be fully human. I am nowhere near that.
So we are children still playing in a sandbox, fighting, pushing, bullying, and sometimes getting along. Yet we seem unable to learn. Is it a choice? The easiest choices do not take much effort, it is the choices that lead to a new life that takes work, struggle, and grace to grow into.
Yet if God is indeed love, then it is true, that every little effort we do is taken up by Our Father and is there before God for eternity. When we die, it is the love we take with us. Or if we decide by our life choices not to love, there are only ashes.
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