Be Content with God’s Love

I was trying to justify my existence by thinking about all the good things I do and all the people I’ve helped.  Thinking about these good things made me feel like I had a purpose and some meaning in my life, that I had a right to be at all. 

Then it struck me.  None of this actually works.  Not only will the few good things I do never sufficiently cover all the pain and suffering that I have caused others and myself by my stupidity and selfishness; but my identity, my very essence, cannot be defined by what I do. 

Unlike God, whose essence Is His very existence and action, my essence is truly distinct from my existence and my action.  I am not pure being and goodness and truth and beauty.  But, both my essence and my existence, indeed all I have and am that is good, come from God.  God both designed me and created me, He gave me my existence and my nature, my mode of existence and the purpose for which I exist.  He did these things, not because I deserved them, I didn’t even exist yet, but because He had a total overabundance and overflow of love.  I am because God loves, because He Is love.  What I am is also because God Is love. 

The most significant part of me, what defines me most accurately and most perfectly is the love that God has for me, the love that He had for me before He even created me, the love that inspired my creation at all, the love that redeemed me at the price of His Son, the love that forgives all my numerous sins time and time again, the love that rushes to embrace me while I am still far away, the love that sustains me in existence even when I openly rebel against Him.  And what marvelous love is this!  The love of the all-powerful Creator of the whole cosmos and all the heavenly hosts.  The love of Him who Is and who was and who will be forever and ever.  The love of Him who is Love itself.  The love of Him who is the source and summit of all perfection, glory, and ultimate beauty.  What more could I possibly desire than this love? 

When I try to justify my existence by appealing to various small things I do, that may be truly good, I reject the very ground of my being and call it insufficient.  I accuse the love of He who Is Love of not satisfying me.  I seek my essence in small, created things which I possess or accomplish.  I identify myself with that which I merely do. 

Worse yet, I inevitably sin.  Then, my identity becomes sin, I become sin.  Since I have chosen to define my being by what I do, when I sin I become sin and am left empty, cold, alone, despairing.  Who can love sin itself?  It is satan who desires us to identify ourselves by our acts, for then when we sin we become one with him, who identifies himself by his hatred of God, the God who forbids us from sinning, and thus forbids us from being and from being ourselves. 

Why do I try to add to my reason for being?  Why do I feel the need to justify who and what I am?  Why do I say to God, “Your love is not enough for me”??? 

The reality is that God’s love is superabundant!  In His love come all goodness, beauty, ecstasy, contentment, rest, glory, acceptance, and union.  If all I have is the love of God, then I have everything.  I must be content with God’s love.