Never take God for granted

This is our usual problem. We take God for granted many times. Even when He is always around, we manage to ignore and even go against Him. We have to overcome this problem.

Let’s remember that time when Christ returned to His hometown and started teaching in the synagogue, and his people could not believe that one of them was a “big guy.” (cfr. Mt 13, 54-56)

That reaction can well describe our attitude toward God. Even if we are Christian believers, many of us do not realize that God continues to be with us, inside and outside us. He is all around.

A beautiful psalm describes God’s omnipresence. It is worthwhile to put it here, in part, so that we become familiar with this phenomenon and start to correspond to it properly.

Psalm 139 says: “You have searched me, Lord/ and you know me. /You know when I sit and when I rise; /you perceive my thoughts from afar. /You discern my going out and my lying down; /you are familiar with all my ways. /Before a word is on my tongue /you, Lord, know it completely. /You hem me in behind and before, /and you lay your hand upon me. /

“Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, /too lofty for me to attain. /Where can I go from your Spirit? /Where can I flee from your presence? /If I go up to the heavens, you are there; /if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. /If I rise on the wings of the dawn, /if I settle on the far side of the sea, /even there your hand will guide me, /your right hand will hold me fast. /

“If I say, ‘Surely the darkness will hide me /and the light become night around me,’ /even the darkness will not be dark to you; /the night will shine like the day, /for darkness is as light to you...”

I remember Opus Dei Founder St. Josemaria Escriva saying something similar. “There is something holy,” he said, “something divine hidden in the most ordinary situations, and it is up to each one of you to discover it.”

Yes, what we must do is cultivate the skill of being aware of God’s presence all the time and in everything. It’s a matter of honing our contemplative dispositions and skills, which means that we should not just be contented at looking at things in their externals and neither in their internals. We have to go beyond and see the presence of God at the core of everything that exists.

God as Creator can never be absent from His creatures, because as creator He is the giver and maintainer of a creature’s existence. Take Him out, and that creature reverts to nothing.

God is in control of everything. He may allow us to act freely such that we can go against him, but He is on top of us. Our freedom cannot remove Him from us. Our freedom is properly exercised when done to give glory to God.

We must sharpen our contemplative skills even in our mundane affairs — the most worthwhile activity we can do. For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul by missing God in his life?