God's Peace

How beautiful it is to make peace with your time, your condition, circumstances and life. Only God can give you that peace and no one. You cannot buy it. You cannot manufacture it. You cannot learn it. No exercise will cultivate it in you. This peace if filled by God.

Everything is unequal in this world-the rich and the poor, the high and low, like and dislike, the taste and the tasteless. God has this habit to fill us with peace of our status and position. God does not out of necessity fill us with the zest and yearning to equal the rest. Rather he teaches us to carry our crosses everyday because he has loved us too and if he motivated us to match others then even we would be tested by God to match Him in His love which we always fall short of and need his mercy.

God's Patience (in His Mercy)

We find it so difficult to reject or say no to people. We use wrong ways to say it but we do not like to face people and do it. When we meet someone, we make up our minds whether we like those people or otherwise. We pass judgments on the people even without knowing them well. It is so easy for us to decide whom we like whom we don’t. Who is petulant and who is endearing, who is kind and who is rude, who is rash and who is reticent. We have our perceptions of people and treat them and respect them according to how we can avail of them in our lives and not what they are.

I then realized that God patiently tolerates all my behavior and remains silent. We rebuke people instantly when they err. We wish to correct people when they digress. We wish to silent people when they speak too much and hurt people when they hurt us.

All this time, God keeps silent with us. He does not silence us, rebuke or punish us or wish to send wrath so that we are taught a lesson for first removing the log out of the other’s eye. He gives us the freedom to do as I wish and waits until I will come around with my own will. Such is God’s respect for my freedom. How much more mercy and compassion I need from God. How much more mercy I need from God for always not giving up on me and being patient with me even when I am not patient with others.

I can never imagine how much contrite I have to be but I know that more than that I need God’s mercy for what I am. I can change but not so much as to not avail of God’s mercy or to make his mercy something that is extravagant and a reserve. I am saved as God is merciful when I am not so with the world. Oh! How I need to forgiveness for this and yet God is merciful.

Turning towards God

I may read big entertaining books and try to believe that I utilize my time and am enjoying myself. I may run away from emptiness and a strange void and do different things to keep myself busy. Things those are meaningful in their own right. I may even read about you, O God, thinking that may be that will bring me to peace. But isn’t my heart at unrest? I am fooling myself if I think that all these will bring me peace. I am fooling myself to believe that the taste of hot coffee will linger around after the coffee is had. I have to take refuge in You. I cannot run away from You. My emptiness is not the reason of abundance of time but running away from sharing my things with You. God, You know everything and You wait. You know that I have hurt You by running away from people who may need me or I could be service to. My conscience hurts and I pick my book or listen to music instead of spending time with You for that would be to face my misery and face You.

But You are the path to joy and in You is all my grace that I receive. You have given me all gifts and yet I disappoint You. I do not invoke You but allow fear to engulf me. My gifts don’t deliver and I do not ask for You and when I fail to ask for You I discredit your powers. You become a loyal duty of a religious soul rather than the 'bank of water' that a deer pants for. You become a bank account that has treasures rather than sunlight that the dawn seeks. God, help me to reach You first and realize once and for all that all my strength, I receive from You. I can fight the world with your help. But if I abandon You, I am abandoning myself. I abandoning all my strength and other graces I can invoke. I abandon my shield. I abandon hope and I take refuge in fear of the unknown. But you have said, “Do not be afraid” I do not remember You but lay low in my fear and do not turn to You when little problems affect me. Help me God, to be greater than all these. I can only find peace in You.

I am a fool if I think money can give me happiness. Can money change day to night and blue to green? Can money make me smile at everything around? Can money change people around me? Can money change me for people? Can money give me more joy from others? Help me to understand that these things belong to the world and I am not of this world but my passions rebel against you and cheat me and my soul into resigning. But You should be my stronghold. You should be my Guard. You are my hope in this world that reasons according to their conveniences, profits, purposes and goals.

Encounter with God

O God, what an immense responsibility you have put on me. The responsibility that comes with loving you. Because I love you, I love. I remember to forgive, please, search and seek when I remember you. I remember to make peace, be patient, love and give when I remember you. What have you done to me, God? I am trying to be more like you? How much do I fail, God? I am reminded of my humanness and my need for mercy. What would I do God, if I had not my encounter with thee? How would I be, God if sinful and offending thee? What do I do God, but suffer now that I know what thee are and live for thee? My life is in your hands here after, I no longer live but you live in me.

God's Mercy

I was just thinking of slumping into bed. Before that I wanted to drink water and found orange juice instead. I had some and reached my bed. Just then my mother brought my favorite wafer crisp chocolate bar and said: have half of this today. I brought it for my birthday. I thanked her for it. I was to enjoy good sleep and looked for my cell-phone. That was to set the morning bell. I swept the table clean of all the books I was reading. I was almost kneeling to say my usual 3 hail mary’s before going to bed when I remembered something. Most of us are told not to ask why this or that happens to us but accept it graciously as God’s will. We are told in heaven we would surely know why such things happened to us and how they only bring God glory and it is not for us always to understand things happening to us but to play along peacefully to accept God’s sovereignty over our lives. Another thing occurred to me. What did I do to deserve such a good life and why God has mercy on me is also something I hope to be revealed in heaven