God Desires You (Fulfillment of All Longing 3)

Ways of seeking God

We all have a powerful desire within us that we call “eros,” that is, a hunger or thirst for infinite beauty, goodness, and truth, a desire for God. We have this desire because we were made for union with God. Faced with this desire, we have three options: we will become a stoic who represses all desire and just follows the rules; or we become an addict who tries to fill his infinite desire with the finite pleasure that can never satisfy but only enslave; or we will become an aspiring mystic; one who longs for God. Prayer is becoming a longing for God and God satisfies this longing by giving Himself to us in proportion to our desire.

Ever since the creation of the world, God’s invisible attributes of eternal power and divinity have been able to be understood and perceived in what he has made – Romans 1:20      

Essential Immersion

Though we were created for God, sin has darkened our vision and it has become hard to believe in Him. Still one of the fundamental ways we come to know God is through the beauty of His creation. Creation is the first witness to God’s plan of love (see CCC 315).  As our eyes are opened to the divine message inscribed in creation, everything around us becomes an astounding theology lesson; all the beauties of the world become so many manifestations of God’s glory (see CCC 707).

Think of your favorite place in nature.  Is it the beach, the mountains, the plains, the desert?  Did it ever dawn on you that God has been drawing you, calling out to you through the places in his creation that attract your heart? As Pope Francis says, “We were not meant to be inundated by cement, asphalt, glass and metal, and deprived of physical contact with nature” (LS 44).  One of the reasons we find it difficult to get in touch with God is that we are not in touch with creation. Throughout history people were moved to profound contemplation by looking up at the stars. But most people in the world live in cities now where you never see the stars or the sunrise or sunset. It’s essential to our humanity to make time to immerse ourselves in the beauty of God’s creation.

Read the Signs

“Saint Augustine issues this challenge: Question the beauty of the earth, question the beauty of the sea, … question the beauty of the sky... question all these realities. All respond: ‘See, we are beautiful.’ Their beauty is a profession.  These beauties are subject to change.  Who made them if not the Beautiful One who is not subject to change?” (CCC 32). The beauty of creation was designed to lead us to divine beauty – God himself. One time we were driving to South Dakota in a heavy rain storm. It’s a long boring drive up I-29. As I was daydreaming I began to say to God, “Are you really there…” at that moment the rain stopped, the sun broke through and there was the most incredible double rainbow and I am certain God said at that moment, “Do you need more proof than that!” All created beauty is to be a sign a revelation of the Beauty of God. Can we read the signs or are we blind to them? Are we anesthetized?

He Wants to Give Himself to You

“The goal in all of nature is life!  The rhythm of time – day and night, months and seasons – serves the purpose of life.  Soil and air, sea and sky, rocks and hills, sunshine and rain all serve the purpose of life.  Every living thing in creation is designed to reproduce.  Every plant, every tree, every shrub, every blade of grass tells the story of a seed that found purchase in fertile soil.  Indeed nature’s reproductive process is happening all around us all the time … If God is speaking to us through the natural world, then it’s clear that one of his favorite subjects is mating and fertility, coupling and life-givingness.  One has to be blind not to recognize this unending ‘song’ of love and life everywhere.  If what I’m saying sounds crazy, ‘ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air and they will tell you; or speak to the earth and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you’ (Job 12:7-8)” Inform us about what? About who and what God is, God is lifegiving love. There is a fundamental call from God, calling you to open your soul to Him because He wants to give Himself to you.

The Bridegroom

The Catechism says, “Even before revealing himself to man in words of truth, God reveals himself to him through the universal language of creation, the work of his Word, of his wisdom: the order and harmony of the cosmos – which both the child and the scientist discover – ‘from the greatness and beauty of created things comes a corresponding perception of their Creator,’ ‘for the author of beauty created them’ (Wis 13:3-5)” (CCC 2500).

Psalm 19:1  “The heavens declare the glory of God, the skies proclaim his message …” What are [they] saying?  God is a lover: a Bridegroom.  And precisely as a Bridegroom, God is a creator: a life-giver.  Creation tells this story.  In fact, in the next verse of the psalm we read that the sun ‘is like a bridegroom coming forth from his chamber to run his course … nothing is hidden from its heat’ (Ps 19:5-6)”