“NO YOU DON’T”

I guess it’s part of being human, but I often find myself trying to put God in a box…completely figuring him out. ”Gee, I know God and I understand him pretty well.” Well the short response to that proposal is “NO YOU DON”T”. Dave, no one has figured out God. While he has revealed much about himself, he is still God and is so far beyond what we are able to comprehend. Hmmmmmm.

So many attributes of the Lord just go beyond our ability to comprehend.  Just when I think I’ve got my arms around him, I realize that I don’t. Salvation history …..  from the Garden of Eden, to Israel’s saga through the Old Testament, to the Lord Jesus and his 33 short years on this earth, to the past 2,000 years of the New Testament…. can be simply mind boggling. We can read thru the Bible and the history of the church. We can be enlightened by the holiness and brilliance of the saints…yet the mystery remains. It’s like the scientist’s explanation of the physical universe…”woe, with the new Webb Telescope we really have this figured out”…NO YOU DON’T. We clearly know things but it’s obvious that what we know doesn’t even begin to approach what we don’t know. 

Where do we go with this dilemma? Someone coined a phrase that always rings true to me…..” No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care”. In some ways, it’s true in our relationship with God. I can continue to grow in my knowledge of God’s greatness, in the majesty and power of the Lord and his creation, but if I don’t continue to realize how much he cares about me, about how much he loves me, about how much he has blessed me and shown me mercy, then it just doesn’t satisfy that deep yearning in my heart. 

I need to know that the Lord loves me deeply and dearly. I need to know that I’m precious to God, and that he has forgiven all my sins. I need to know that he will never leave me and that he truly is preparing a place for me where every deep desire will be satisfied. I need to know that the Lord delights in me, that he enjoys me, that he even laughs at my jokes…. that he knows my name and that he cares about me, tht he wants to spend time with me ….I need to know this and so do you.

God loves you and me with a Godly love. All the difficult and hateful things of this world did not originate with God. Listen to the readings from last Sunday’s Mass. (June 30^, 2024) 

• “God did not make death, nor does he rejoice in the destruction of the living. For he fashioned all things that they might have being; and the creatures of the world are wholesome… For God formed man to be imperishable; the image of his own nature he made him. But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who belong to his company experience it.”(Wisdom 1:13-15;2:23- Ezekiel 33:11)
• As I live, says the Lord God, I swear I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked man, but rather in the wicked man’s conversion, that he may live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! Why should you die, O house of Israel? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone who dies, says the Lord God. Return and live! (Ez 18:32)

Oh dear Lord, help us to receive this magnificent loves that you pour out upon us. Help us to turn to you in our need, to ask for your mercy and forgiveness which you generously give to us. Help us entrust our whole life and being into your loving arms. “Jesus Christ, Son of God and Savior of the world,  have mercy on me a sinner.” 

And this is very good news.