For the Love of God, How do I do That?

Many people do not seem to understand how a person can actually love God. That's because they think of God as an invisible being far away in the clouds somewhere.

They ask themselves, "How can I possibly love someone I've never seen and cannot touch?"

First of all, He can be seen if only we will stop to look for Him. Nature abounds with evidence of His existence.

Secondly, we can touch His heart with acts of love and compassion for our fellow sojourners along the way. And He can, and often does, touch the hearts of those who spend time with Him every day.

As to how to love someone invisible, how many times have you heard of people falling in love through letters, over the phone, and now even over the Internet?!

True, people are attracted by each other's images and appearance, but unless that attraction quickly grows by sharing mutual interests and feelings and values and morals and beliefs, etc., it quickly evaporates.

A story I heard recently told of a man and a woman who had carried on just such a romance. Neither had any clue as to what the other looked like.

They decided it was time to meet. At the pre-arranged hour, the man was dismayed to discover a worn looking older woman, a bit on the doudy side, wearing the pre-designated red carnation on her shoulder.

However disappointed he must have felt, he was most gracious to her, as she was to him, a debonair young man in the prime of life. And he made another date with her later that evening to meet her for dinner at a very nice restaurant.

When he arrived at the restaurant, she already was seated, and he took his chair across the table from her. Very shortly, she excused herself to visit the ladies' room, and she did not return. Instead, a lovely young woman came to his table and introduced herself as his long-distance romantic interest.

It seems that she intentionally had sent the older woman in her place to satisfy herself that her outward appearance was of little matter to him. After he got over the shock, he was delighted to discover the truth of the matter, and they delighted in retelling the story to their grandchildren many years later.

The man had fallen in love with a voice on the telephone and the ideas that had been exchanged between them.

The point is that it is very possible to fall in love with the Lord. And this all was brought home to me very recently, after I happened to read a book called, "Conversations with God," purportedly an account of an Oregon man's ongoing conversation with God.

The book itself is fascinating and contains a lot of references, not only to Christianity, but to other lines of belief, and even agnostic and atheistic thought. Although there are a lot of things discussed in the book with which I agree, there are too many with which I cannot possibly agree. And, therefore, I must conclude that an "angel of light," as it were, must be messing with this man's mind.

To embrace the thoughts expounded in that book would mean that I would have to discard most of what I believe, and I could never do that. It did, however, make me realize that I really do love the Lord and enjoy the time I get to spend with Him.

To stop believing in the Lord as I do would leave such a huge void in my life that I would not wish to live in this messed up world one day longer.

Just as the man in the story above fell in love with an unseen personage through her voice, I also seem to have fallen in love with an Unseen Personage through His Voice in the Bible and through years of communing with the Lord through prayer, music, and meditation.

If you don't already have this wealth in your life, I wish it for you most sincerely.