Both nearest and farthest

THAT’S how God is to us. He is both the one nearest to us and also the one farthest. But he never leaves us, even if we leave him. He will always be with us, until we definitively would drive him away.

He is nearest to us, because as our creator, he is at the core of our existence. For as long as we exist, it is God our creator, the giver of our existence, who keeps us alive and kicking in this life and in the hereafter.

Though we may not notice it, he is actually in our every thought, desire, word and action, in every pore of our being. Let’s hope that we can be more aware of this reality, so that we can conform ourselves to it properly. We seem to ignore it most of the time.

We also know that he is our Father who loves us no end. He always intervenes in our life. Indeed, there’s no moment, no part or episode in our life where he is not there. His interventions are meant to give us guidance, wisdom, power, peace, etc. in our life. He is everything to us, since our life cannot but be a shared life with him always.

He is also the farthest, since he is the most mysterious being we can ever encounter. He just surpasses our capacity to know him fully. But this should not come as a surprise, because even in our daily relations with our loved ones, we may know a lot about them, but certainly we neither would know them fully.

What is important is that we ought to know enough of him as to keep a constant, intimate relationship with him. Somehow we should be aware of his presence all the time and, in fact, should refer to him all the things that happen in our day, asking and consulting him, and especially begging for his help, because more than us, it’s him who gives proper care and direction in our life.

It should not be hard to find him everywhere, because by putting ourselves in his presence or when we call to him, he would already be in touch with him. As our Father who loves us, he is ready to come to us. He actually does not play hard to get.

We need to constantly ask him: Lord, how should I react to this particular situation? How should I behave, how should I understand this development? What are you trying to tell me or show me with this turn of events?

Especially when we find ourselves in difficulties, or in the grip of a persistent temptation, this is what we should always do. We should be wary of our tendency to do things on our own, relying solely on our reasoning, our feelings, our estimations.

We need to live by faith moment to moment, to be more immersed in God especially when we are in some decisive moments or before a most seducing temptation occasioned by wealth, power, fame.

Yes, we always need to use our reason, our feelings, our imagination, creativity and the rest of our human faculties. But these without faith would just go in circles and can pose a great danger to us.

It is faith, that is, when we are with God, when we can truly penetrate into the essence of things, discern the direction of the confusing flow of events, find meaning in the most inscrutable phenomenon we can meet. We can move toward a fuller understanding of reality when we live by faith.

For this to happen, we need to pray always, study the doctrine of our faith, develop the different virtues that actually resemble us with our Lord more and more, have recourse to the sacraments where Christ gives us his grace, etc.

We may also need to have some human devices, some tricks and gimmicks we can use to keep us always in the presence of God, ever referring things to him and not just contented with keeping them to ourselves since we might feel we already understand them. We have to avoid this frame of mind.

Another important element is humility. We have to continually deepen and strengthen our humility, that awareness that we are nothing without God, because our default behavior seems to be pride, self-complacency, self-sufficiency. We need to be at war with these tendencies all the time.

It’s also humility that leads us to keep on looking for God, always feeling the need to begin and begin again.