The Beckoning

Some mystics have said that it is God in us that seeks God beyond us. I treasure that insight. It helps us make a conscious connection to the Creative Forces of God within us which leads to the adventure of a lifetime.

God is an Infinite Mystery, but we can safely say that God’s Holy Energy under-girds everything including us. If God is Love and we are created in the image of God, we are love at our core. This is why our desire to love and be loved is such a good place to start for developing and maintaining a quality connection with God. It’s about valuing and pursuing our divine heritage.

Ego-centric fears and surface issues do not erase our ancestry and identity. They simply cover it up or confuse us until we come to ourselves and make the journey home (as the son did in the story of The Prodigal Son). Like the Wise Men we celebrate at Epiphany, we journey with God in the here and now by heeding the beckoning of The Light. That adventurous journey is the central opportunity of this lifetime. Our path becomes clear as we have the wisdom to see what matters most (Love) and an adventurous spirit capable of homing in on it as we go.

Aligning us with our divine heritage is what makes Jesus such a wonderful channel of God’s Love (and Mary too when you think about how she’s impacted the world). It’s not about status. It’s about the intensity and quality of the love involved. I suspect that Mary’s intense love for God beckoned the Holy Spirit and Jesus 2000 years ago. Jesus in turn beckoned the world from a manger and then from a cross. It’s not an exclusive thing. The beckoning of Divine Love is unconditional, inclusive and expansive. That’s why it is so powerful. But ego-defined conditions often need to be released in order for God’s Divine Magnetism to reach, heal and move hearts. That is the beautiful, redeeming (revaluing) process at work in all devoted love.

God’s Love is characterized by unconditional devotion. God loved us that way in the first place. God never stopped loving us that way. Our greatest opportunity is to reciprocate by loving God and others as God loves us. I haven’t been able to do that alone. I’ve only been able to do it as I appreciate the process as a life-giving cycle or a pattern with which I can move, like my breath and heartbeat. It’s much more like getting into a river and going with the flow than functioning like an independent contractor who is trying to strategize and make things happen on their own.

The other day I had someone refer to the rest that works as a way to walk the path of love. That brought joy to my heart. I think that’s why Jesus invited us to follow him in living it as a lifestyle (Matthew 11:28-30). Its elements provide a framework for moving with God’s Mysterious but Miraculous Love.  It helps us relax our egos and open the door to the Creative Forces of God. Once active inside, those Forces help us work with God on the outside. It’s an in-and-out, life-giving process as close as our breath or our heartbeat, but it’s actually even more fundamental than those.

The graceful, life-giving rhythms undergirding our eternal souls rise from the Heart of God – that’s why they sometimes lead us into Love beyond description. Then we want to live rooted in this amazing Love so we can branch out with it. Like the camp song “Pass it On” said, “That’s how it is with God’s Love/Once you’ve experienced it/You want to sing/It’s fresh like Spring/You want to pass it on.”

More power to you in walking the path of love, whatever you call the process. I hope the ideas and practices of the rest that works enrich your journey with God, inside and out.

Thanks for journeying together.

​Blessings,
Scott

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