Loving God

Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind.  --Matthew 22:37 (Douay-Rheims)

Loving God is a simple, yet challenging, task.  It isn't really accomplished through so many common everyday avenues -- avenues like following what is legal or following what the society/culture accepts as "normal" or necessarily even adhering strictly to what your church, teachers, or parents taught.  To love God requires a spiritual awakening within your soul that attunes itself to that wee small (but strong) presence.  All the other avenues while possibly helpful in the quest to love God, really don't accomplish the whole task.  I don't believe we fully love God only by being busy for God.  By being busy for God I mean having the to-do check-list -- you know the one: 

• Went to church
• Taught Sunday School
• Fed the hungry
• Said nighttime prayers with the children
• Said mealtime prayers

Check, check, and check.  Those things are not bad (and are even helpful) but there is something more and richer than doing for God.  There is being with God.  Being with God is being still and knowing the nearness of God to you.  That nearness is ever-present, yet flurries of activity, or worries, or busy thinking keep us at arms length from experiencing it.  Pausing from all the bustle of living, in the quiet dark of night and feeling our own personal loneliness in our soul as a unique individual who is beloved by God allows in the sweet living spirit that nourishes the love between Lover and beloved.  The way to love God with your whole heart, soul and mind is to plumb the depths of silence for the One who carries you eternally forward in time -- to sense the depth of intimate caring and concern that God has for you and whatever you are enduring.  Be still, know and love God.

Prayer:
Merciful Lover of our heart, soul, and mind, release us from all our doing and busy-ness to find and have moments and moments every day where through our silence we sense -- touch, feel, hear, or see you more clearly and dearly.  Amen.