Discovering the God Within

"Who is this God who you claim loves you? What makes you think that this almighty, every powerful Creator knows your name? What nice of religious nut are you to swallow this stuff about a personal God who not and no-one else cares not quite us and listens to our prayers but LOVES us?"

No, those are not the words of an acquaintance of mine. That's \what our militant culture is maxim to me but In more politically true words. clip to the chase, they are really maxim "You don't nevertheless acknowledge in all that crap do you?"

I plead guilty. I am that nice of nut or rather, I seek to be. I want to see at God through the eyes of faith and see Him as much more than just a "higher power." or the " man upstairs" or some benign figure "up there" who I call upon behind I am in make miserable or infatuation support in passing an test or getting a job.

The God I desire in my spirit is the thesame one that inspired heroes past Martin Luther King or Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or mother Teresa to bring light to our world, the God who lives in all husband who stands by his dying wife and every teenager man or woman who is comfortable to die for his country. It is this kind of full of life God that I desire to consent in and carry in my heart.

The God who I want to energize me is not Catholic or Baptist or Muslim.

He/she may talk to me on Sunday hours of daylight church but I am just as likely to look the Divine touch in a dragon fly or a towering Redwood tree or in the sob of a newborn infant.

No denomination, no racial action has dibs on God. The voice I try to listen to is beautiful clear practically His desire to enlarge all of us below the umbrella of his love. We are every tolerable to his table. His is a universal love.

Many years ago I went to Japan as a missionary. I thought my calling was

to convert the Japanese people to Christianity I wanted to create the Japanese people Christian, not realizing that in the past I even existed He had already showered them behind his love.All I was in reality called to was to adore the Japanese.

I want to carry in my soul that lesson I educational in my missionary days. I desire to see the presence of God in the poor and the homeless and the refugee. Flawed as I am (My connections would agree. "Yea, he is flawed all right") I reach that who I am and who I want to be are nevertheless poles apart..

But I have arrive to comprehend that my faults or yours don't create any difference to this tremendous fan This God loves me yet and all of humankind as soon as me. My God is much more than a "higher power" distant an

So yes I am the nice of nut who not lonely believes in God but adores Him below the broadcast of bread in the Eucharist and below the proclaim of the homeless guy on the street corner, and the drug user or the juvenile girl struggling in the same way as her sexual identity.

Years ago folks of my generation used to tell one another, "Don't worry. God's in His heaven; all's right bearing in mind the world." I don't think that pretension anymore. God is not in his heaven. He is here accompanied by us, within us. And that makes all the difference.

The author is a former Catholic priest and missionary. He is along with a pardon lance writer and a columnist for on top of twenty years later the Fairfield, CA Daily Republic.