To see, to know, to live God's Will

To see, to know, to live God’s Will

How can we view the love God has for us if we wear blinders as a horse who can only go the direction another guides us with a bridle?  It is bad enough that there are more than a few adversaries trying to get hold of the reigns that hold our attention.  And there will not be any who are willing to let them go lest they lose their control over our emotions and ambitions that they now have.

As with temptations that always are more attractive than following the rules of God, it's like a child sneaking to the cookie jar and when mom isn’t looking reach in and get another handful of that delicious treat used only as a prize for good behavior.  “Will I get caught as she thinks mom won’t see me, thinks the child?    It’s worth the chance because this is so tempting that I will take the risk.”

Somehow that has become the standard thought and action of most humans always looking for the easiest manner to find and absorb the forbidden fruit of life.  There is something to be said about the attraction of a “keep your hands off me” that corrupts the better sense of the person with a watering mouth.  Like waving a carrot in front of a rabbit but always holding it just a breath out of his reach.  The attraction is always there until one who is after it gets caught in a situation it should have avoided.

There are those times when we find ourselves within the grasp of something we shouldn’t be going after and when the sign of authority catches our attention our excuse is, “I didn’t know this was wrong.”  

How easy it has become to minimize the severity of a sin that in our eyes we want to categorize them into just venial sins that can be erased through holy communion.  That is true, but there is the irony that we can accumulate these small sins, especially if it is the same one over and over, and build an immunity where forgiveness plays a role of confusion for us and begins to make no difference anymore.  To explain this further, we must not willfully commit a sin without the effort to eliminate its hold on us and find a way to bury the need to seek forgiveness that begins with contrition.  Remember what Jesus told the Pharisees regarding adultery?  Looking at a woman with lust in your heart, you have already committed adultery.  (Mt. 5: 27-28).  The intention to fall into sin is as bad as, or maybe more severe than the actual physical connection.  Either way, sin is the entrapment of a soul through which the Holy Spirit tries to call us away from, but our free will stands its ground.  God will not interfere with that.

It takes more than a simple promise to walk away from sin to make us whole in the eyes or presence of God.  There is the dream, that is not an intellectual vision, that calls each one to the essence of our creator.  It is called holiness!  Reaching this state of spiritual equality can be found through an emptying of our attachment to anything that replaces our knowledge of God and allowing the Holy Spirit, who already resides within each one, to present to us the reality of the Trinity and the very life of his divine reality to take over.  Without this understanding of God’s will we shall continue to slip away from our savior who entrusted his own life to his Father’s Will!

Ralph B. Hathaway