So often my prayer has been,
Oh God, help my eyes to remain on you. Help me to see who you really are, not a projection of you to suit my wants. Help my steps to stay in line with your truth, that I might be connected to the truth, and see the simple, beautiful truth which you fully are.
This prayer is so crucial to my everyday. When I am in sin, and I simply feel disconnected from God, from others, from a good sense even of my self, its often because I have lost touch with the truth of God. I have either neglected to walk with him through my hourly struggles, the effects of this dark fallen world, or I have done so without proper focus (as this dark fallen world can drag me down) and have ended up walking with a god which is an imaginary friend, rather than The One Who Is, the great I AM.
God...is. God is true. He is here. When I either forget that He is here, or I lose my sight of His truth; which is bound to happen again and again throughout the day, I must slow down and pray that the Holy Spirit make me aware, and turn my gaze and awareness back to God's truth. Yesterday's prayer shall not sustain me today. Neither, I have found, will morning's prayer sustain me through lunch, nor midday's prayer sustain me through evening, nor evening's prayer sustain me in bed. Such is the effect of this dark, fallen world; sin has disconnected us from organic union with Life. Shame has blinded our eyes from beholding Light, and disordered desires has dumbed our mind's from living, enlightened, in knowledge of the Truth.
Now God is our Life, it is in Him alone. He's brought forth our survival, and apart from him we might survive...awhile. But Life beyond our corrupted bodies in decline, that will only continue on in Him, and our bodies have no hope of reglorification, to their original design, apart from He.
God is our Light. Everything in life...careers, hobbies, fantasies, money, sex and all pleasures, foods, it is all vanity. It all means nothing beyond the passing wind of pleasure that they give us. If they are all we have, sooner or later we will realize their meaningless and be aware of great despair...but for the reason of the eternal destiny of all that is, for the reason of the greatest war of all REALITY visible and invisible which He wages and we fight in Him, entering into God is the only place that offers us meaning beyond a fleeting pleasure. In Him, then, alone is Hope; to partake in a joy that is eternal, that is not a vanity, that will outlive ourselves and our age and never run dry. Drinking of the Lord's water, then, is indeed a drink of water that will never make us thirst again, while the world's water will always make us thirst for more. Joy in God is true, while the joys of the world are good for their moments, but truly, they are nothing more than the holografic meatloaf that Plankton ate night after night in Spongebob Squarepants. They aren't real in eternity's perspective, and we are all, as baptized Christians, legal residents of eternity.
Thirdly, God is Truth. This is perhaps the hardest to grasp, because the truth of God supersedes human knowledge. It cannot be grasped with our human means. Yet to truly live as we are meant to, as humans, drawing our life from Life himself and living in the light of Light himself, we must seek the Truth behind all of this beauty called creation, we must seek the Truth of the painter who truly did paint us, with a brush of truth, a hand of truth, paints of truth, truth, truth...
God truly created us. This really happened. And God is not a lie. God is true. He really is here.
My corrupted eyes don't allow me to see God in completeness, not till he purifies and glorifies this body fall'n to sin. But the Holy Spirit can put his hand beneath my chin, and direct my blind eyes to at least face the right direction. This I must pray He do many times everyday.
Theology is great food for the mind. However, even the most thorough, in depth knowledge of theology is nothing but a starting point, because being human is much more than being a mind. Being is so much more than thinking.
Theology prepares us. It gives us a great knowledge of God, of what He's like, what He's done, what He hasn't done, what He isn't...theology helpful, it cannot hurt us. But it is not enough. It is a tool, not an end.
Theology, books...they offer a great appeal, because we control how much theology we can learn, and books, well, there's nothing to be afraid of in them, no uncertainty, no faith required. We just need to read a binding from cover to cover, and bang, we come out of it with a whole new grasp of knowledge.
But we do not come out of reading a book or a course on theology closer to God, easy as that. You don't read someone's twitter feed and become closer to them.
And pretend that's not a little creepy, but what reading that twitter feed and what reading that book on theology does is prepare us to become close. But we need to have a conversation with the person, and with God, well, we need to continually leap off of the platform of our cushioned theology books into God's arms. We need to be able to say, God, I've read and read and read about how merciful you are, how much you love me...and I believe it. I believe you're mercy even covers up how messed up I am. I believe that your love accepts me, even though I'm selfish, I'm prideful, I seek glory, and on and on and on. I believe that your eyes light up with joy when I come to you, even though I'm such a sinner, even though there's so many things about me that could be better and holier.
Knowing this Truth, God, or being able to maybe glimpse at Him, as is a more appropriate description of the sight we are capable of, first requires an awareness that we are too little to do this on our own. Second, it requires an awareness that God's beautiful mystery is WAY beyond the grasp of our minds.
But the third point is important. It is that to come closer to the Truth than our mind's can alone, we need to come to know God not just in thought, but in experience, in love. Knowledge of God in the mind prepares us well, but knowledge of God in our hearts exceeds our minds capacity by at least a thousand fold.
I must not settle to know that God is Love, to know that He is mercy. I must experience His love and mercy again and again, in my heart, not settling for the mind, of which I falsely think I have more control. In the heart is awe of God's Truth, that he loves me so much to share it with me; in the mind is awe of myself, for being so smart to understand it. The only difference is that in the mind alone, I don't.
Seeking everyday that organic union with God that my human body was designed for, that is the goal of every single day, which needs to be resought every single hour, as challenge upon challenge of this dark fallen world as chaotic as an asteroid belt throw at me. As a human apart of reality, the source of life is Him, the cause for hope is Him, and all truth of this chaotic world is in accordance with Him.
Union with Him, therefore, dancing between awareness of the divine physics of it and also of course of the romantic and very personal loving relationship he has invited me to enter with Him, is the purpose of my every day.
Please help me, sinner that I am, oh Holy, Holy Ghost.
