There is a Road to Walk That Draws Closer to God; One That is Beautiful, but Also Hard

As we approach the love of God, we draw nearer to his spirit which draws us to the beautiful, and opens our hearts to experience the good, and to explore the good. We are moved by a spirit which is a stranger to this world, one of order and one of beauty, one which leads us to leave the world behind, and to set our sights on a world beyond this world – one where there is peace and rest. Time is no longer a variable, but seems to slip behind our feet as we are caught up in a project, working, and loving every moment of what we are doing. We are spending time with God, united with his heart, where all the noise of the world draws away, and there is peace.

How difficult it is to find when to enter into this peace; to make space in order to, tomorrow, spend x amount of hours accomplishing this or that. We may have experienced this joy of creating in the past, and are drawn in our hearts to explore it again; yet to find time is incredibly difficult, and we are unaware as suddenly what we thought was a week since our last time working on this, was actually a month! Other matters become more important, it is easy to make concessions in favor of waiting on the right inspiration; we have an idea, we know the idea, and want to invest in the idea. And yet, somehow it keeps on getting pushed back. Other priorities take precedent, we lose focus and forget. Even though our hearts are drawn to explore the beautiful, to spend time creating, we hold back. We know it is more valuable to be here, than it is to go to the grocery store. But even so, when it comes time to sit down, and write, or do whatever work we are intending to do, we think it is more fitting to find something better to do.

How hard our hearts resist the simple act of being willing, of being open to spend time exploring the greatest good that is revealed to us, God – as we are drawn to those things which encourage us to look deeper into God, but then at the door, decide we would rather do something else. This is intentional, and it is part of following God’s will; and this is revealed as we draw nearer to who the Lord is. Nothing in this life is every intended to be our home; we are never called to settle in ourselves, and be idle. God is always calling us to grow beyond ourselves, to serve him, to submit ourselves to something greater – him – as we make a sacrifice of what we want, choosing the greater good in denial of ourselves. We would not learn that much, if all things we did in this life were like movies: where all we do is watch and remain precisely where we are. We do not take action, but consume without motion – our souls are observers, not actors, and though the movie might be very good, we are only consuming the good; we ourselves are not moving, nor sacrificing anything to God.

God calls us to something more; he calls us to grow in our faith every day of our life, to deny ourselves and pick up our Cross, and follow him. He is our joy, he is our prize, he is the only good that is in a day – and to seek him, means we must not turn away from this door, with an excuse of: I will seek God more tomorrow. We are creatures of habit, and without applying ourselves to the faith, so do we get caught in the weeds of the day, beyond which we wonder: why is there no more joy? 

This becomes clear, as we understand that all the joy we remember, was only our experience of God; and that God is not going to put many helpings of deserts on our plate and say “eat up” for the rest of our life! No, he will present a path to us, one which we may not want to do, but which we know is good; and as we walk on this path, the Lord gives us all strength and guidance in his spirit, to help us follow this path. And though it is difficult, and though sometimes the road feels long, as we overcome, we see God was at the beginning, at the end, and taking every step with us along the way. And no words can describe the light which fills our hearts, and the joy which carries us through the day, as we are no longer burdened by all that we wanted before, but are free, soldiers in the service of the Lord; on the walk towards the kingdom, ready to act always in order to serve the King. His fire ignites our hearts, his love breaks every chain that once hindered us, and we rejoice to be reconciled to the Lord who has created us, who loves us, and with whom we hope one day to be in eternal fellowship.

But there is an obstacle to this joy, there is a wall that often gets in the way. It is a phantom wall, it is not real; it can disappear in the moment if our hearts are willing. This wall is sin, as our hearts are more inclined to what is easy, what is of immediate benefit to us; and we look at the whole world through this lens. We look clearly ahead, and wonder why we are not joyful; we do not realize, because we are often prone to stumble into habit, that our entire worldview is rooted on one variable, me, and that we were judging everything from this root. As soon as we turn to God, carrying the Cross he has given us, we begin seeking a greater good outside of ourselves. In this walk we are united to the heart of Jesus, where we see clearly more than we can know, that we are sinners, but that God is good. We see the Kingdom before us, and the Holy Spirit makes clear the way to us; as we abide in him and he abides in us.

But God must always be the one who moves first. It is his voice which leads us, it is God who gives us those things in our lives, plants in our garden, which we are called to tend. If we turn away from this garden, these plants will begin to wilt and the weeds will grow, and we will find ourselves to be in a shadow, a stranger to the joy we had once known. But if we patiently remain faithful to tending to this garden, God will keep us secure in his love, teach us, and lead us in to become masters in all the Lord is calling us to do. What this is, is never more clear than when we place the Kingdom of Heaven before us, and understand that all of this life is only a trial ground for the one awaiting us, the Kingdom which God is calling all of us to seek with all of our hearts.