God, the creator of all things, the first cause, the first mover, all-powerful, and all-knowing became a man in the person of Jesus Christ. He came so that He could share life with us; He came in order to rid us of all imperfection through sharing with us His life and His perfection. He gives us himself, and he is love. Since He is perfect love, and we now have Him with us, we are able to love Him in return as He wishes to be loved.
John the Apostle tells us, God is light, and in Him there is no darkness if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin. Light is what we see; it makes things visible. It is what shows us the world. Without light nothing could be seen, and with light things are visible. We are called to walk in the light of Christ. We are called to live our lives immersed in the love of God, to see God at all times, and in all things.
Light is a source of life for the world. A tree grows naturally toward its source of light, and so we too are called to grow towards our light, and our light is God. Away from God, away from light, we only find death, but in the light, in God, we find life. Just as God is greater than the world, and yet came into this world to share His life with us, so the life He shares is greater than this world. God’s gift of life is given to us in this life, but is not of this life, just as God is not of this world, yet he came into this world. The gift of life, which God gives us, is His own life, and we who receive that life receive an eternal life, just as God is eternal. Jesus said that this life shall pass away, but that His love is forever.
God wants us to have a deep, personal relationship with Him. He came to share Himself with us, and to have us share ourselves with him. The complete sharing of one’s self is love, and John tells us that God is love. There is no truer statement in Scripture than this. God is Love. Coming to know and understand love is to know and understand God, and to love God is to share that life that he gave us with him, just as he wants us to, in a deep, personal, loving relationship. One may say that love is not of God, because those who do not know God can love, but we are made in God’s image, and naturally gravitate toward God just as a flower naturally gravitates toward a source of light. God is love, and this love calls each and every one of us personally. He knew each of us by name before we were born. God calls us by name. It is true to say that God loves the whole world, but not only does he love the world as a whole; it is just as true that He loves each of us individually.
God loves us all, and wants us all to love Him. He has called us toward him since the very beginning of our existence and eagerly awaits our acceptance of this love. We are not perfect. Were we to say that we are perfect we would be liars, but God awaits our confession that we are not perfect, and wishes to share with us His perfection and himself?
Thomas Aquinas said that God’s existence consisted of His complete understanding of Himself, and He understands everything through the understanding of himself just as He is the creator of all. The life that God shares with us is His own self, and He is love, and also the understanding of Himself, since love is the sharing of ones self, and God must share Himself with Himself (thus we see the necessity of a trinity), what God shares with us in sharing himself is the understanding of his Love that is himself. We are all, therefore, called to understand God’s love within ourselves, and to share our own love with God.
How can you define a relationship with God? There are many kinds, for we are all different people. Some people are very open about their relationship with God, others are shy and like to keep it to themselves. There are those who may have a distant relationship or maybe none at all but may realize God is there. God still loves us the same. He just has a unique relationship with each and everyone of us. A relationship with God doesn’t stop at church, synagogue, temples, wherever people may go to connect with what you feel. Does our relationship with God ever really start at a particular religious environment? It gives us a foundation and background, which is important, but it’s when we relate to God in our everyday lives that we choose our own free will to go to places of worship and get closer to him. But we should never think that it ends there.
Don’t get me wrong, going to church, praying and reading the Bible has definitely helped me strengthen my relationship with God. It’s important but there are so many other ways that God makes his presence known in our life to help us understand him more, to strengthen a relationship with him and we may never realize it.
Take the people we know and love. I heard in a song the other day: when you love someone you see the face of God. We are all created in God’s image. God sends people into our lives. They may be with us for a short while or long while but they are reflections of the Lord and they teach us things along the way. Our love for those people is part of our relationship with, God for he sends them and gives them a little message to give us and I think it works the other way around as well. God is love, and we experience love in so many ways, shapes and forms. In the movie Michael; a good point was made, and I am paraphrasing here: Remember what John and Paul said…not the apostles, the Beatles…all you need is love. The love we give and receive is definitely a big way he is in our lives and trying to make our relationship with him stronger.
God performs miracles every day we just don’t realize them. The sun rising and setting is a miracle, a child being born is a miracle. There are so many simple things that go on in the world that we think are normal, everyday occurrences because we know how they happen, yet we don’t know why they happen. If we could just sit back and focus on the simple things that God does in our lives I think we could understand and relate to him much more. Maybe God is so simple that He is too hard for us to figure out.
