Dedicating my life to God.
A meditation on love.
But we don't want to talk about our biological or earthly fathers; we used them to create a small metaphorical representation just to illustrate our alienation from God, a God who, as the Lord's Prayer says, is a father in heaven for believers. But the world has become an altar unto itself, so that we worship it and forget God. We live in the world and for the world, actually for our body. All the attention we pay to our outer and physical life leads us away from our essential spirituality and from God as our transcendental origin, which leads us beyond this limited and mortal life. God is the one or the one thing that represents a life beyond this earthly plane. If I want to embrace this life, I have to remember my divine origin. The right way to approach God is through a paternal-filial relationship.
If we accept that we are all children of the one God, who created us and gave us life with his love and wisdom, it would make sense not to forget him and to be grateful at all times for what he gives us for our lives, from our food to the light that illuminates our spirit on the path to knowledge of our own nature, which is spiritual.
But many of us live our lives without knowing that there is a loving Heavenly Father and Creator. They are the prodigal children from the biblical parable of the prodigal son, which we can read in Luke 15:11-30.
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke 15:11-30&version=NIV
For them, God does not exist, he is a fairy tale and they are the children of a random event subject to the blind laws of physics. The false postulates of a science that opposes spirituality in all forms of life have severed the bond of love that connects us to our divine origin, our spiritual home, the only thing that does not protect us from death. Accepting death as a devastating reality of our being goes against all the logic of physics itself, the first law of thermodynamics of which essentially states: energy is neither created nor destroyed; it does not vary in total quantity in the universe; it is only transferred from one system to another and transformed.
And yet, with regard to ourselves, we adopt the erroneous idea of a total and definitive loss of our vital energy and, with it, of our self.
How can such contradictions exist? The answer is simple: on the one hand, there is the desire of the new preachers of materialistic truth to win the life debate and make a name for themselves; on the other hand, atheists would rather close their eyes to sacred science than believe in a God who has been deeply manipulated by the church. For centuries, undesirable elements have worked to pervert the divine and turn religion into nothing more than an instrument of oppression and self-enrichment.
To bridge this chasm of nonsense, some have imagined that our energy, or consciousness, does not die, but that after death our individuality is absorbed into a cosmic consciousness, so that our life force is not lost, but our individuality is. This may be a comforting notion for a conscience burdened by guilt, which, as with the extinction of death, is freed from its shadows and fears, but for the responsible individual, the extinction of his actions, together with his self, cannot sound satisfactory, because it extinguishes our morality. For many, it is not death itself that makes them afraid of dying, but the judgment that may come on the other side for our deeds. By eliminating that other side, or conveniently turning it into an abstract, non-judgmental being, we absolve ourselves in one fell swoop. But what is all too easy is nothing more than a comfortable lie to justify the errors of our selfish lives. We have turned “Thou shalt not judge” into “Thou shalt not remind me that I give free rein to my most primitive impulses, however much I may embellish and refine them.”
That being said, it is understandable that we wanted to deny and eventually forget a God without compassion, which religion has imposed for so long, abetted by general ignorance. But that ignorance now lies behind us and it is time to rebuild from the ashes what could not be destroyed in so many years of madness. I assure you that there is much to save.
There were and still are people of good will who are trying to salvage the truth from the wreckage left by so many lies. Looking back can be daunting, looking forward no less so, but let's try to do it with good humor. Reconnecting with God, freely and in love, is part of a positive vision of the future. But to do that, the prodigal son, or sons, that is, we, must return home.
It is about changing our love, which was first manipulated by some - the Church - and then by others - materialism. This love must now be changed from within, by ourselves. This reflection you are reading is an invitation to make that change. I assure you, brother, it is a vital change. But I know you have questions and doubts. Love does not change easily, and it must, because goodness requires effort and patience.
Why should I dedicate my life to God and what exactly does that mean? The short answer to the first part of this two-part question is simple: because God is love and we are the object of his love.
It is about rediscovering our divine connection. Love must be responded to complete the bond between two parties.
To answer the second part of the question, devotion to God can be understood as a sign of respect, appreciation, and gratitude, all of which lead to a feeling toward God that we call love. Love is important, and directing it toward the right object is equally important, because we live on love.
Because love is so important, I would like to expand on this answer a little, so that the reader, who has not come here out of pure curiosity or boredom, can strengthen in his heart the thought of thinking of God every day, thanking him and asking him for light and strength, and doing so from the Creator and from Christ as the personification of his divinity. Jesus Christ is precisely the figure that enables us to love God. This makes Christianity a special religion, because Christ is the only one who, while being God, is also our brother, as he proved by his sacrifice on earth. Christ has given us a clear example of a life of faith in our transcendence and in love. Believe in God and love one another. Forgive insults and resist the temptations of the world.
Accepting and understanding this fact, or on the contrary, not grasping its enormous significance and rejecting it, makes a huge difference on the path to God as our origin and giver of life, but who has come to meet us as our fellow human being. An infinite and almighty God cannot be loved as a brother-God who, moreover, tells you that you are equal to him, which Christ often mentions. Great things await us in our encounter with God.
But great things often start with something very small; a storm starts with a breeze, a cloud and then a few drops of water. Dedicating my life to God must therefore begin with the simple fact of understanding why and for what this dedication is. Perhaps you feel the desire to know, and this depends on how much or how little you continue to link your love to the present world, which repeatedly seduces and oppresses you. It is a double game in which the powerful exploit your weaknesses to make you fall in love and then make you dependent on them. It is also known as debt.
Life brings with it a series of obligations, sufferings and problems, but also things that, on the contrary, bring us happiness. The burden of life in this world can become unbearable and then the desire for freedom is born; in fact, it is born every Friday afternoon. But instead of detaching ourselves from the world, we become more attached to what it offers us; instead of turning our attention inward to get to know ourselves better, we repeatedly try to get what we want from outside. The return of the Prodigal Son in the Bible was not a change of direction or a visit to the parental home for tea. The return was a complete turning inward. It requires a certain turning away from the world. This turning away from the world was misinterpreted by many, and they retreated into four walls, so-called cloisters.
The idea of devoting our lives to God is always associated with this renunciation of the world in the form of seclusion in a monastery or convent, something that fewer and fewer people in the West are willing to do because life has become more comfortable and enjoyable , a life full of opportunities for self-fulfillment in our outer selves, connected to the physical world through experiences presented as showcases of items to make life more intense and, above all, more enjoyable. However, there are still an enormous number of people on Earth suffering from poverty and disease, but there are now more than 8 billion of us and, among all these people, many millions, more than ever before in history, can enjoy earthly life without major worries. Furthermore, we live in the more or less informed confidence that we are on the verge of solving all or almost all of the world's problems.
Media propaganda does not show us the most serious human problems, such as hunger, but has been drawing our attention for years to threats to the climate and speculating on disaster scenarios that, thanks to technology, can be solved so that we can continue to enjoy life as long as we have enough money for an electric car and a villa with solar panels. As in the past, the new religion, led by a new caste of priests – scientists and industrialists – shows us the way to salvation: buy what they say and do as the new masters of the world allow us to do. Scientific materialism is nothing more than a change of leaders and dogma. And many are happy because they can continue their lives without transcendence, thinking only of their morning avocado toast. So it is enough to be a follower of the sustainability and health narrative. Permission to enjoy is thus extended. And God has nothing to do with all this; it is humans, in their self-love and self-sufficiency, who cook and eat it all for themselves.
Who in their right mind would shut themselves up in a wall to pray and do penance all day long? Nobody, and it's not even a good idea! But we can consecrate our lives to God without becoming monks or nuns; we don't even have to take holy orders. It is much simpler, although it requires consistency and seriousness. Dedicating my life to God is an entirely internal act, and this internal act, silent and intimate, creates a connection to my own spiritual essence and to my transcendence beyond this earthly life.
There is a good reason to dedicate my life to God, because I understand God as the source of my own life force: my death. We all will die one day. Unless you believe that dying is the end, because you weren't paying attention in physics class or to my words, dying means transcendence for you, leaving this plane, transferring your energy to another plane; leaving behind the body, which is no longer of use to you, and returning to the Kingdom of God or Heaven, the pure spiritual plane from which we come and to which we belong.
So think of it this way: devoting a few minutes each day to God and everything that goes with it, such as the immortal life of your soul, means preparing for your journey, which you cannot cancel. And wouldn't it be better to start this journey with a little preparation, a little knowledge, yes, even with some excitement because you believe, trust and love what God is doing for you?
Death is inevitable. Dedicating your thoughts to God while you are still alive is the necessary turning point so that on that day your soul can begin the journey with open eyes and knows or at least suspects what awaits you: the Father's house and his love.
Not believing in God is like taking a train, but with your back to your destination, facing the seats that are opposite to the direction of travel. Opposite these seats, which are occupied by those who do not see the station where they have to get off, others are traveling who see the landscape that awaits them arriving. So atheists die with their backs to God, so that their souls on the other side do not see home, literally their place to stay, their home, and only there have to find it, which is very slow and laborious for the disembodied spirit, because in the hereafter it is not subject to the driving forces of this material world, the most important of which is limited lifetime. In this life, illness, misfortune and death serve as an incentive to reflect and question; they serve or should serve to make us more compassionate and less selfish, and to recognize that everything here is fleeting. The obvious transience of all that we love is the profound incentive that can lead us to God or leave us falling into nihilism and selfishness. We can choose a seat facing the journey and the destination, or we can sit with our backs to the world that awaits us when we get off the train, that is, this life.
In the hereafter, there are none of the attractions of material life, and the spiritually unenlightened soul is often unaware that it is in the spiritual realm, that it has left its body behind, and that it is dead to the world. But the hereafter works differently from the material plane in terms of reality. Over there, reality is created by the soul itself. In the hereafter, its reality will be a projection of its inner self. The soul is immersed in this projection, the projection of its beliefs, those that have shaped its love. If these were exclusively for the world and nothing for God, if its whole life was directed outwards and never inwards to discover its true spirituality, it arrives empty-handed at the spiritual level, without spiritual treasures, because throughout its earthly life either totally denied the truth of eternal life in the hereafter or allowed a completely distorted idea of it to develop through a religion or false mysticism, fell in love with this idea and then brought it with them as their love. In order not to hurt the soul, God respects this love until the free spirit has recognized his own error. In the meantime, the mechanism for preserving the soul's life is to let it live in its own reality created by its love, surrounded by its ghosts that it projects. But without the light of truth, it must develop from nothing to get home to heaven.
Traveling in the seat of the train facing the destination means consciously acquiring the commandments of Christ for this life, about love and our immortality; it means knowing that a better life awaits us, with the hope and faith in this eternal life that we reach at the station where we get off the train of earthly life. The return to the divine home must begin here, by dedicating my life to God and renouncing the world. This means remaining in the world and being a support to others, but expecting nothing from the world, nothing but pain and death, which I can only overcome in God by following the example of Christ. The message is simple: we are eternal spirits in the love of God, our Father in heaven. To resist this message is a childish and futile protest that fails under its own weight.
Seize the Kingdom of God.
To dedicate my life to God means to keep alive in my soul the connection with my spiritual past and future. At this level of material trials for the soul, we have to see if we maintain our faith in God or if we throw it overboard and embrace the world, ignoring the heaven that awaits us.
But what is this heaven and where is it? If I really go to this place after I die, which I perceive as an intangible and invisible dimension, how can I best understand it? There are many books and videos on the internet that tell of the lives or experiences of people who are there or have been there and returned. If you search, you will find them. But none of this will do you any good except as pure entertainment if you don't first understand that we are all creators of our spiritual reality, which manifests in the afterlife according to our love. I'll say it again: the heaven we go to is exactly what we have built in our hearts during our life on earth. That said, if you don't believe in anything, your heaven will most likely be a rather empty and bleak place. Filling this inner heaven with light and life is possible if you ignite love for God in your soul through Christ. Our heaven is therefore a construct based on our love, for the simple reason that love gives us life and that means that not even God can change your love if he does not want to take your life. Heaven is therefore actually made up of many heavens shared by like-minded souls who must help each other there to find a better, more truthful heaven than their love could create and project as a reality on earth. I know it sounds crazy, but the point is to understand that the free soul has to search for the treasures of her eternal life in the midst of the desolate wasteland that is life on earth. We are miners of living jewels, jewels that the soul takes with it into the spiritual world as achievements over its weaknesses, even though many prefer dead jewels to matter, which are precisely a reflection of their having given in to these weaknesses of self-love and self-glorification. It is about seduction and resistance, about submission to the world or victory over this temporal plane, in faith and in love.
It's all about love. Love is an attractive force that gathers. Attracting and gathering, thereby attaching value to my heritage, be it spiritual or material, depends only on my free will, with which I decide what or whom I love.
Whatever you love, that will be your life, but not always an ideal life. Misaligned love separates us from true life, which comes from a source, namely God, a source that we carry within us, but which we are meant to discover and bring to life with our love, to awaken. This brings us to the longest answer to the question of why I should dedicate my life to God. In reality, it is about dedicating my life, my love and my attention to the best part of myself, which in turn is the immortal and transcendent part of my being. It is with love and patience that a kingdom is built. This kingdom will be where I want it to be. The kingdom of God lies within ourselves. These are not just nice words and I am not writing them to put myself in a nice light or to impress you. These are your lives. To deny God is to deny your own spiritual nature, your being. A material, biological view of yourself is a death sentence you impose on yourself. No more, no less.
But there is a remedy, and it is called the Kingdom of God. You and I and everyone else on Earth, with a few exceptions, are honored members of this kingdom, or at least special candidates who are eagerly awaited. We have come here to earn our title. But this has its requirements. We must gather within us the jewels that we can take with us into the life in the Kingdom of God – the more we carry, the better. And we get these jewels through the generosity and love we can have in this life, where giving becomes receiving. It is not necessarily about giving money; each of us has a talent or more that allows us to give to others, which expresses itself in support, comfort, encouragement and strength for our neighbor. And a small gesture in this sense can have immense value for the positive balance of the soul.
The Kingdom of God is a series of spiritual goods that await me like a hidden treasure within me. In order for the goods of this treasure to be mine and to benefit me fully, I must work hard, even to the point of violence against myself, but never against others. This fight, which is the daily fight with my weaknesses, requires the ability to fight, to persevere with determination and an iron will. I must see my spiritual elevation as a relentless war against everything that wants to distance me from the treasure of goods that my divine spirit keeps in the heart of my soul, but will not hand them over without I have made myself worthy of them, which means that I must become a spiritual warrior who distrusts his own shadow, who is everything that exalts me before my brothers, pride, vanity, rank.
The spiritual goods that make up this treasure are my virtues, which become tools that allow me to recognize the will of God and apply it in my daily life, to be part of that kingdom, even if only in a limited way, while I live incarnated in my body on earth. Because as long as I live here, I will always be between two worlds; I will have my feet on the ground and my heart in heaven at the same time. Having my heart in heaven means that I love God and remember that we are His children; that our nature is spiritual, which implies a future for my being beyond earthly existence; a future of endless growth.
To be like God.
The best way to dedicate my life to God is to try to be like Him in all that is good, that is, in patience, wisdom, love and compassion. It is not divine power that is the goal of our aspirations; it is goodness, the development of goodness, of kindness in my soul. Because if it seems an insult to the most sacred in the universe to be like God, he should remember what Jesus said to his disciples: If my Spirit comes upon you, you will be like me and do greater things than me.
The case of the apostles was a special case, at a special time and for a special mission: to spread the gospel of Christ, the most important message of love in history. It is about changing our love, abandoning our habits of blind complacency and thinking only of our own happiness; it is about increasing our love for our neighbor and making us simple and humble. We have enormous attachments to our self, qualities we take pride in and consider essential parts of our being, our identity, such as being ambitious and competitive, winning over others and leaving them behind as losers. We have transformed the oppression of others into an action style that we call competitiveness, deceived by a false idea of what life is about, an idea based on absurd notions about the struggle in the animal kingdom. Many believe firmly in the maxim “eat or be eaten”, which is truly barbaric! Being human means rising above this ruthless and pitiless view; being human means feeling that my soul is a vase of fragile clay that contains the best or the worst I take in and carry with me; to be a beacon of the light of life or a seductive fire among so many others that lead others and themselves to ruin for the good of the world.
The key is to understand that God created us as the culmination of everything that exists in the universe; we are the ultimate expression of his love and from us this love must return to him and to the people around us.
So this love, an active love, is the greatest offering of my life to God, the best of prayers. And in this simple love, which asks for nothing in return, we resemble God, because He loves us simply and only wants our happiness, our blessedness.
But I have already realized that I cannot dedicate my life to an infinite, abstract, distant God or some kind of intangible higher consciousness. If God wanted to be like that, he could, but what he wants is to be loved and to feel our love. That is why he came to earth as a human being, in Christ, and walked among his children as a brother. Christ has finally made it possible for us to dedicate our lives to God as a presence and life force within us, a presence with a friendly face and a name. Millions of people dedicate their lives to gods that only exist in their imagination. Others believe in a vague deity, like a cosmic energy, and still others believe only in this short life and what it can offer them, as much as possible. The worst belief is the belief in death as the end of our lives and our consciousness, of the self. This belief leads to a distorted, even perverse view of our lives, which causes anxiety and depression.
So if I want to dedicate my life to God, if I even begin to feel this desire, which means that I reflect on God, cultivate my love and do things the way He would do them, especially with infinite kindness, patience and compassion, I must first have a correct idea of God, and for this purpose the best embodiment of the Divine is Christ, in fact the only true one. Any other deity, whatever its qualities, would mold itself into a fantasy that would seriously harm the life of the soul, because the soul creates its world through what it believes, thinks and dreams, and it will find that world when it leaves the physical body after death. If I have dedicated my entire life to the idea of a God who is not a loving Father and compassionate Brother, my soul can only project untruths and its world in the beyond will be a great distortion without light and love.
Now ask yourself the question: What is indispensable in my life, without which I could not live? I want you to realize that you have asked for what you love, because what you love gives you life. If someone were to suddenly take that love away from you, you would feel as if you were dying, and you might even get sick and die. Dying of love or dying of a broken love is entirely possible. Why am I telling you this? I want you to understand that God will never interfere with your life or take away what you love if you have chosen to love him, even if it destroys you. Because if God were to change your love and take that love away from you, and force a love for him on you through his omnipotence, you would still die because your life would go with the love that was taken from you. It is not so difficult to understand; we know that our love is everything, even if it is a selfish love, it gives you life and God will not take it away from you until you ask him to; until you beg him, exhausted by your bad love, to be a better person so that you stop suffering and making others suffer. Only you can change your love, freely and voluntarily, because you have realized that love for God is not only the most logical, but the only one that builds the purest and highest heaven in your soul, which is also the purest and freest life.
Dedicate a few minutes to God every day, as if it were a little declaration of love that you hope will be reciprocated. Little by little, you will feel this love until it is so firmly anchored in your heart that no storm of life can ever tear it away from you.
Amen. God bless you.
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