For the Love of God

“We were born for the Love of God. If we do not find it, it were better for us if we had never been born.” —Justice Hugh Black

There are two kinds of people in the world. There those who aimlessly trip through life with goofy grins on their faces, who, if they think about life at all, are more concerned with what it provides than what it means. I think of friends of mine whose lives revolve around hunting, fishing, sex and six packs and who sincerely believe that the one who accumulates the most toys has won. 

And then there are other friends who spend their entire lives trying to discover what, if anything, life is all about.  They’re the readers and thinkers, the lovers of music, art and wisdom, who take on the ideas of all the ages, examining them from all sides, trying them on for size, jettisoning some, embracing others, in order to find the good, the true and the beautiful—always learning, always searching, always trusting that life someday will reveal it’s long–concealed and exquisite design.

In either case, about age 40 or so, when they’re more in sight of the end of life than it’s beginning, the enterprise becomes senseless. That’s when they get deeply restless and the search for fulfillment through money, power, sex or celebrity no longer suffices.  They get no satisfaction from philosophy or morality, artistic creation or any of the pursuits of the will or ego. That’s when they may realize life’s stupendous simplification: God is what they’re been looking for all their lives. And there he is at the end of every alternative, standing and waiting!

If you’re looking for God, my friend, you will find him. You will find him because he has been looking for you all your life. It is his longing for your love that has drawn you to seek him. “I look for God,” Pascal said. “because he has found me.”

DHR