Have you ever been in love? So much so that you easily gave your heart and soul to another person? To someone you trusted with all your being and could entrust your whole self to?
Was there anything you wouldn’t do for that person? Was there any devotion that you would withhold? Would you make any sacrifice to spend more time together?
Finally, how did you feel about yourself? Did you feel like you were more yourself? Freer to be who you really are deep down? Did that unconditional and blissful love set you free?
If you’ve ever truly loved someone like that and were loved back in return, the answers to these questions come easily.
Now, imagine loving God—your Creator—like that. The One who intimately knows your soul because He, in fact, created it.
Entering into a relationship of spontaneous love with God might sound a little off the charts.
Afterall, we can’t even see Him? God can seem so aloof and elusive?
Consider this. If you have been deeply in love, how was all that possible? Where did those complex range of emotions and indescribable joys come from? How do we have that capacity as persons? What was going on in the depth of your soul as you looked into the eyes of the one who loved you for who you are—unconditionally?
What a liberating and exhilarating feeling. There is no other like it. It is like an advance experience and glimpse of Heaven. More pointedly, it is a glimpse of what our relationship with God can be—Who made this liberating experience possible in the first place.
When you think of the faculties and capacities we have as humans, it’s mind boggling. The range and resolution of colors we can see. The unlimited and subtle distinctions of taste and smell. An unlimited range of sensations upon our bodies. These strange things we call emotions that run the gamut. The ability to reason and think, as well as remember our thoughts, actions and feelings and analyze everything. Finally, the will to direct our thoughts, actions and attention.
We cannot claim credit for any of these. All gifts. The same as our ability to form relationships—to connect—with other people on many different levels. All mysteries we take for granted in our daily lives. But all given, ultimately, for a supreme end.
And that’s to know, understand and love the One who created us. And to see and love His creation as His gift to us.
But how does one approach and connect with one you cannot see, touch or feel.
Well, it starts by acknowledging and recognizing the handiwork of the One who created us. In each created thing there is an “I love you” from God the Creator. God’s creation can stimulate our minds and sense of wonder, especially when we remember that creation continues, operates and is sustained by the Will of God. Everything is in act because of His Will. Everything is animated by His Spirit. We cannot get away from God. And yet, we hardly recognize Him, for the most part.
God has been wooing each one of us from our birth. He has arranged all things—including suffering—to draw us in. He allows us to fail and fall hard sometimes so we might get up and seek Him. He never gives up on us as long as we have a breath in our bodies. He wants only our good—a good that is somtimes difficult for us to comprehend. He wants only our happiness, but we make it so difficult to be happy by insisting on our own ways, ways that make us anything but happy.
God is someone you can trust with your whole being. Someone you can give your whole self to without reservation or fear of being betrayed.
The more we entrust our lives to God in thouhtful prayer and fuse ourselves with Him in a communion of wills, the more He reveals Himself to us. And the real surprise is, the more we see who we are.
When we arrive at a point of complete and spontaneous love with God, we experience the true liberation of our whole being. We experience it in a way that makes all other relationships pale in comparison.
No one would love another person he or she didn’t trust. With God, who wants only the best for us, we can plunge into a relationship of unlimited trust.
The highest act of trust anyone could offer God—one that Mary, mother of Jesus, made from the first instant of her creation—is to surrender his or her will to God without reservation. To say to God, “Your will, not mine, be done in all things.”
To surrender one’s will to God without reservation unleashes the greatest magnitude of freedom and liberation one could ever experience.
It is a surrender to and fusion with God that’s only possible through love. We don’t know the full extent of love until we enter into that kind of relationship with Him. Until we look upon our God—as we did at the moment of our creation—and behold his loving eyes gazing back at us.