Sustaining our conversation with God

WE have to learn to converse with our Lord all the time. Let’s try to avoid any gap in this lifelong conversation with our Lord. This is the ideal thing we can and ought to do, primarily because our life is not simply our own. Our life is always a life with God. That’s how we are created and designed.

It’s a shared life, and the least thing we can do to maintain that sharing is to keep a conversation with him. To paraphrase a romantic song, we should keep our music with God playing, finding new things always to say to him, and certainly we can never run out of things to tell or ask him. With all the challenges, problems and pressures we have today, we will always have something to say.

Obviously we have to overcome certain biases and the natural awkwardness that come with this necessity. We can compare this situation of unease to a child who has to learn to speak, walk, write, eat and behave properly, etc.

In the beginning, like the child we have to pass through some clumsy drills of the learning process. We need to develop a sense of focus and substance in our conversation with God. But if we just persist and persevere, we can hack it sooner or later.

The first thing that we have to be clear about is that we actually need to talk with God. We should dump the common idea that talking with God is nonsense. This is actually a groundless myth.

We need to talk to him because as our Creator and Father who loves us all the way, he is everything to us—the source of truth, goodness, wisdom, power, etc. Even if we cannot penetrate the mystery that shrouds him, talking to him provides us with the best and ultimate perspective we can have in understanding reality.

He is the one that gives meaning to all the events in our life. He gives us the proper direction. In fact, Christ described himself as “the way, the truth and the life” for us. “No one goes to the Father except through him.”

We should not just talk with ourselves, nor just with the others. Our consciousness, which is a result of some conversation, should not just be limited to our own thoughts and feelings. God has to enter into it.

Our sense of consciousness would be gravely handicapped if we just use our common sense, or our own estimations of things. We even should not just rely on our arts and sciences nor our increasingly sophisticated technologies to cope with all the demands of life. We need God always. He is the light and the strength we need.

God is the foundation of reality. What is true, good and beautiful can only come and end with him. Outside of him, we will only get at virtuality, not at reality. A basic attitude to develop therefore is to actively look for Christ in the things that we are handling or doing.

We should not be passive and wait for some kind of inspiration before we start talking with God. We ought to have a pro-active approach. We need to look for him, and engage him in a conversation.

With God’s grace, which is never lacking, and with our proper dispositions, and some skills and habits that we need to develop, we can always enter into some dialogue with God. We can always refer things to him.

That’s why St. Paul tells us that “whether you eat or drink, or whatever else you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor 10,31) And again, St. Paul encourages us to work such that “God may be all in all.” (1 Cor 15,28) This is the goal we have to aim at.

When we are in the dark, we need to talk with God. When we are tempted or experiencing the sting of our weakness, then talking to God becomes urgent. Remember St. Paul’s “it’s when I’m weak that I’m strong,” that shows us that we can use our weakness to occasion our getting close to God, our source of strength.

When we are baffled by the twists and turns of things inside us and outside us, our Lord for sure will be there to give us a sense of direction and confidence. When we are tired, harassed, bored, whatever, he gives us rest, peace and joy.

We need to sharpen our skills to sustain our conversation with God always!