Waking Up
Without authentic presence, wholeness as a person is unreachable. To become who we are, we must awaken to the life God’s given us. We must acknowledge our sleepiness and ask God to revive us.
The purpose of life is simple: To be (to live, to live whole-heartedly). Just as the purpose of riding a bike is the riding itself, so also the purpose of life is the living of it. Jesus, quite radically, spoke of the dead as "the sleeping" and announced He'd come to bring us life (to wake us up!). Not just life in terms of the presence of active biological processes (e.g., respiration, ingestion, and elimination), but life abundant:
Life that's ever growing, ever moving, ever expanding, ever changing.
Life that's been quickened—or awakened—to the lovingkindness and comforting presence of Almighty God.
Life that's been awakened to ourselves—to those extraordinarily ordinary people who reside within us.
Life that's been awakened to the people around us.
And life that’s been awakened to the physical world in which we live and move.
When asked which was the greatest commandment, Jesus answered, "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength, and love your neighbor as you love yourself" (see Mt 22:36-40). I think Jesus intended these thoughts to be viewed as one complete whole. To love my neighbor is to love God; to love God is to love myself; to love myself is to love my neighbor. One element (or aspect) does not exist, at least in its truest or fullest sense, without the other two. These three streams of loving wakefulness flow together to form a mighty river of radiant, whole-hearted, life-giving energy. Imagine the difference one fully awakened individual could make in our troubled world. Look at the difference Jesus made: He loved God, loved Himself, and loved others; and the world has never been the same since. May we go, do, and be likewise.
