Tag: faith

The Gift of Life: Finding Gratitude and Joy in God

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Vitality is embracing the gift of life. The joys of being alive. Animals seem to embrace it fully, but humans seem to take it for granted. Somehow complexity undercuts vitality or perhaps distracts our minds away from the true joys of life. We need consistent gratitude despite the undulation of the days.

We must always acknowledge grace and make the most of every day, minute, or opportunity. Maybe we can think about death and our limited life. We can take risks knowing that God is with us and won’t let us fall beyond despair. The reminder of death can push us to make the most of every moment. We have to love others as if we can never love them again, and experience life to enjoy as if we don’t have another day. With trust faith and urgency, life becomes so much more beautiful. We don’t have to be afraid of the lion outside, rather we can dance outside and enjoy our life with God.

There is another element of maximizing life: pushing ourselves to the limit and experiencing something new. For instance, in athletics, there is an ineffable feeling of achieving the pinnacle, like winning the gold medal at the Olympics. Or, in feats of the mind, a joy that comes from pushing one’s intellectual abilities and synthesizing something new using all of our capability. In the spiritual domain, I think this becomes the closest thing to the ideal of experiencing the best of life. The perfect harmony of accessing the spiritual in the physical world is somewhat abstract, but those with the eternal perspective know that this is what life on earth is all about.

True vitality comes from doing God’s will. The harmony with our ultimate purpose in life is incomparable to anything else. It’s impossible to explain, but I think this is what many thinkers have believed to be the best kind of life. It encapsulates the physical and mental. It is perfect resonance. Living with the joy of God. Joy is everywhere in life, and this life is a blessing from God. We give thanks for everything—every moment of our life. Even in pain, we can find a glimmer of joy. It is hard to say when others suffer unimaginable pain. To tout our privilege for an easy life seems almost mocking. But from God’s perspective, our easy life can be unimportant compared to the pain. Everything seems so contingent and our idea of significance can be so often misguided. All we can do is give thanks, purely and innocently.

I always look to animals for the purest expressions of joy. They don’t know they are given the gift of being taken away from the wild. They enjoy it all anyway. They look always in the present and enjoy every moment. It’s a kind of freedom that might be impossible for rational humans who are aware of their own existence and mortality. But we need not despair in the same way as the humanist; we have our Lord to free us.

We can derive simple pleasure and announce it to the world. We often complicate joy. The daily miracles of life, the love we are given, and the care we have daily. I see it in my dog. He’s a little poodle with so much energy and lust for life. Every little thing is exciting to him: the entrance of a friend, the simplest meal, and the most repetitive play activity. The repetition and drudgery of life can make us callous and desensitized to the love of life. The constant disconnect through digitization, industrialization, and abstract information can take us away from the thrills of life.

We can lose our perspective on our lives so easily. The value of life. The joy of somebody who almost lost life and was given a second chance. We need to be excited about life. Everything we have and are given and be grateful for it all. Like the terminal patient given a second chance, we need to seize the blessing of life. We always lose perspective when we get into the monotony of daily life, but it’s important to be mindful of how much we actually have.

Every aspect of life can be exciting. We have so much that we have been blessed with. And we need to be grateful for every meal, every person, every joy that we have. We need reminders to be excited about life. Sometimes it comes to us without wanting it, like life being abruptly taken away from us. Seize the day. Think critically about the cliches. Be present and embrace the love of life. We have to dig deep for energy and strength. We need to have vitality and hunger for life. Enjoy everyday moments and have excitement for the mundane. We have to give it all that we have and push ourselves to the limit in this life. There are many aphorisms indicating this: seize the day; you only live once; remember you will die.

Sometimes we can be weary because of our bodily limitations. But we can push spiritually and be vibrant in the mind. We should count our blessings on our bodies. We must take up the cross and use every ounce of energy to move it. It matters where we derive our energy from. It has to come from humility and fear of the Lord. We need energy to serve the Lord, not to serve ourselves. The energy to serve ourselves can sometimes be an easier pool to take from, but it’s cheap and doesn’t last; even if it lasts longer than we think, we are met with emptiness when it finally does run out, for whatever reason it may be. We often have more energy than we think, we are just limited by our minds. It’s not to say our minds aren’t important. They preserve our health and well-being; yet, they can often be too conservative. We have to push harder, especially in this comfort-driven society.

The secular view tells us to live our lives to the fullest because our life is limited. The Christian view is similar but perhaps goes even further. Although some think the Christian view is escapist because there is life after death, the life we have here has eternal consequences. It’s all the more important that every action is directed towards our true, everlasting purpose. The littlest move matters and has eternal significance.

Embracing Meekness and Servitude: The Role of Humility in Christian Faith and Spiritual Growth

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Humility is the prime virtue to battle against the only sin. Fighting pride is part of our purpose in life, but it’s not clear we can ever be completely free from pride in this life. It’s an aspiration that we continue to strive for every day. We have to commit ourselves daily to align ourselves with the light of the Lord. Humility puts us back into the right relationship with God.

We cannot have a relationship with God with pride in the way. It disables us and blocks our relationship with God. Through humility, we can be our true selves as it gives a clearer mirror to shine God’s glory. Pride casts us down and distorts us into the masses of sin, and it taints us into little devils.

Every step we take must be towards becoming little gods like Christ. It’s the Christian aim. We have to push forward to incrementally lay down our pride, always striving to grow nearer and learn more from Christ’s example. It’s a sin and human nature to think that we can have power and claim our own self-sufficiency. Complete dependency and commitment is the only path, and it is paradoxically the most difficult and easy thing to do.

We might have fantasies about being the center of attention or being the main character. It’s easy to seek this immature form of pride that is tied to insecurity, vanity, and want of validation. It’s a special trap for me—maybe it’s the way I grew up, maybe it’s the things I was influenced by. In any case, I need to step back and realize I’m not the main character. This part of humility can be tough because our culture is so tied with the idea that being special means we’re above somebody else. We are special because we don’t deserve to be yet saved by grace. God picked us to be special but it gives us no special status above anybody else. We need to take this to heart and be gracious in all that we do. We must humbly serve in the background.

Look at our pets. They are meek and loyal, but to us, they are more special than any other. We can learn from them to not compare but just act in servitude.  I have a dog that teaches me so many lessons of living life with vitality, humility, loyalty, courage, and commitment. We must direct all focus to others and outward attention instead of trying to ruminate on ourselves and our relation to the world. If we need to think about ourselves, we should think about our relation to God. Meekness can be incidental and a label to describe someone in a certain situation. The primary focus can be the fruit of the spirit. Who are we? We are nobody. We are sinners. But through mercy and by God, we can be saved. This is why we should be meek.

We have reminders all the time of humility that make our lives harder. Shame, inadequacy, and feelings of insecurity remind us to reflect on our haughtiness, pride, and narcissism. We must pray that our hearts can be enlightened. God has called us but our pride blocks our ears. The journey to cleanse ourselves is difficult, but, once we take it, we realize the work is all being done by God. We are just handing the tools to the master; the weight of the tools is insignificant compared to the work, but even the tools feel heavy to a novice. To want to be with God is to be humble; to be humbled is to be loved.

Balancing Work, Meaning, and Faith in Modern Life

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It’s easy to get myopically caught up in a demanding job. We mistake business for meaning. Or we distract ourselves with business to avoid the question of meaning. But a meaningful life is our responsibility, and it will always be our responsibility despite any distractions. This is a great lesson from the existential philosophers for our modern world.

But we cannot be defined by our profession or our status because it is all too insignificant. This perspective on the significance of work becomes clear on our deathbeds. Sacrificing so much for our work or perception is a dangerous trap. There has to be something more. A greater meaning. Mere approval from others might be attractive and give us a temporary buzz, but when we’re alone and left with our thoughts, we know that there must be something more.

Of course, Christ is the answer I am alluding to. The priority must be kept in mind. Christ wants us to work, but we must always work in virtue of Christ, and only for Christ’s glory and not our glory. The meaning is centrally Christ and our work is just the steps we take with him. I often fall into the trap of engrossing myself in work. But a singular type of work. The work that gives me status, approval, and comfort. We have to be careful of the idol of work. In modern life, we can worship business, productivity, and achievement. For this to take the place of Christ is absurd. It can be important to branch out into other kinds of work or leisure as an act of faith.

It’s a blessing to be able to create or engage in creative work. Creative work can be understood as something broader than something artistic or using our hands, such as creating a community, creating a small process of efficiency, or creating a better world for somebody. We must use this opportunity to work hard and create work to the best of our ability. In the same way, Mozart must develop his talent, we have a duty to do our best and hone our craft. If we can, we can have a little piece of creating beauty that reflects divine glory. In this vein, we have to use every second of our time on earth to work. Doing less than what we’re capable of or being lazy and slothful is a sin. We must cut out all the fluff of the opiate of media, easy pleasure, and anything taking away from true happiness. We can get distracted by easy pleasures that pale in comparison to the true joy of genuine happiness. In the same way, classical music requires a finer and finer ear to enjoy; even more, the rapture that a performer feels at their finest performance.

It’s important to be alert and sober. It’s not always about substance abuse but anything that can intoxicate us. Our minds can be intoxicated by people, technology, or any other distractions. We need to peel these distractions off of us in order to access the correct view of life. The mission we have in our life is our mission for God. We have to stay lucid and embrace the discomfort. It’s a part of life. To try and escape life as soon as it becomes uncomfortable misses out on something. It takes out the pensive confrontation of the thoughts we avoid and the things that rise out of boredom. We must process things in sobriety. Another aspect of sobriety is purity. We need to get rid of all distractions like taking off dirty clothes. We need to purify our minds and what we consume with our attention in order to be completely sober. This isn’t some sterile life that’s in store for us. It’s about maintaining control and knowing our boundaries. It’s about having the clearest mind in order to have fun.

In developing more mature skills, we become more efficient and economical. We need less effort and it becomes more refined in delivering happiness. The mature happiness that goes beyond novelty. At higher levels of skill, there are new planes of enjoyment that only a few, those who have achieved equivalent mastery, have properly attained and experienced.

Christian Forgiveness in Daily Life

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Forgiveness is the ultimate mercy we are shown by God. His grace is undeserved and an act of pure mercy. It is ineffable, completely incomprehensible why he would come to us; the only answer we are given is love. We have to remind ourselves of the significance of this every day. It’s easy to forget about it because it’s so incomprehensible. The magnitude is hard to grasp. Still, a part of our daily meditation is to tap into the immense gravity of the meaning of forgiveness.

We all go through hardships of different degrees and taken with different temperaments. It’s easy to forgive ourselves for acting out from hardships, but we can’t seem to access that sort of empathy for others. We assume the worst by assuming everybody has easy circumstances and that we are the only ones suffering. It’s through empathy we can forgive.

In our own forgiveness, we must forgive others and ourselves. Forgiving others may come easy to some, but it is a monumental challenge to those who have been dealt lasting harm from others. It’s an act of obedience to forgive others. We have to look to God to understand others and to show the same overflowing love to others. In forgiving ourselves, we must not be flippant and let ourselves off the hook too easily. Repentance cannot be taken for granted. We may sin the same sin again, but we should know that it becomes increasingly painful and we cannot make forgiveness a transactional blank cheque.

A part of being generous and giving is being forgiving and bending for people. Obviously, there are boundaries and lines drawn by principle that we should not cross. But there is room for discretion, especially when it’s for the benefit of others instead of ourselves. We can often fool ourselves into thinking that we’re being selfless when it’s actually for our own pride. The example by C.S. Lewis is an overbearing woman who insists on having a tiny piece of toast and perfect temperature tea in an attempt to show modesty or the like; in actuality, it’s their own need for control and wanting things just their way that’s at play.

God shows leniency towards us. He could punish us or turn his back on us, but he always shows love and care. We have to use that example. Underlying lenience should be trust in God. There’s a time for everything. One way to understand Genesis and the forbidden fruit is to trust God in our growth. We can’t attempt to have things our way or control the timing of things; in this sense, we should not prematurely taste the fruits. We have to be patient and trusting of God and know that one day we’ll grow enough for God to serve us the fruits when it is allowed. The permission for our own good. It’s not an arbitrary rule; rather, it is like restricting the big boy’s bicycle until the child masters the training wheels. 

We have love as our breastplate and hope of salvation as a helmet. Through this, we can be lenient towards others and understand the relative insignificance of our tribulations. We can forgive others and glean over slights. Lenience can be understood as essentially interpersonal, but we should also be lenient towards ourselves insofar as not worrying about our own abilities and instead leaning on God.

Christian Meditation: Exploring the Unique Dimension of Relationship with God

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Meditation has been in the attention of empirical studies and its positive effects have been readily proven. Still, there is more to uncover, especially in relation to more abstract ideas of religiosity, mysticism, and sacred ideas of enlightenment, the divine, and so forth. It is difficult to connect to Christianity without casting Christianity in the box of just another religion. I will try to tease this separation out and argue for what is unique about Christianity and meditation.

Christian meditation can include other readily studied elements of mindfulness, peace, or whatever else is in popular jargon, but the unique dimension is its focus on the relationship with God. Christian meditation seeks to strip away all the distractions of the world and focus on a deeper reality of, as coined by Martin Buber, I and Thou. This is characterized by mutuality, presentness, and ineffability. It is a direct relation to God, who is ever-present in us and the awareness of the relationship is triggered by many sublime resemblances—music, nature, or other forms. We disconnect from this awareness of God so easily, and it becomes difficult to reconnect to this ideal view.

Being present is another widely used term in religion, particularly in Eastern traditions. One adage suggests that obsession over the future leads to anxiety and obsession over the future leads to depression; as such, the proper way to live is to be in the present. Meditation is supposed to help with this. A key takeaway is the ability to control one’s thoughts and control one’s ruminations on thing out of our control. It’s tempting to self-flagellate over our past or go through hypotheticals of the future, but resistance and focus on the present experiences is the healthier way to live our lives. Enough navel-gazing and paralysis through our catastrophizing.

How do we understand this through Christianity? God commands us not to ruminate on our sins; we must learn from it, ask for forgiveness, and move on. God also commands us to trust him for our futures; we can make prudent plans to some degree, but we must not overly commit to our future. This latter point needs explanation. We are not in control of our future and we tend to forget this. We think we have the power or control to direct our steps, yet we have brief glimpses of our helplessness. We do not know what to do with our ultimate helplessness so we naturally try to believe ourselves out of this. To delude ourselves into thinking we have control is the ultimate poison when things do not go our way. This is why faith and reliance on God is liberating.

The eternal perspective is best understood as a continual present. It takes faith and dependence on God to move forward this way. By staying in the present, we become free from everything else in the world. The daily scurry that is motivated by an uncertain future and the push of regret from a turbulent past—all those elements dissolve in the present. We can enjoy life by enjoying our walk with the Lord.

We also do not know what our past leads up to. As our past grows, it can become increasingly unclear how it all fits together. The trajectory of the past into the future can be so unclear to us. As the saying goes, things can change overnight. In this vein, the monotony of our day-to-day present can be upsetting. But we have to understand again that any second anything can happen and change can be drastic. We have to be faithful in our day-to-day for our master to call us. We must be ready.

The metaphor for me is the walk with Christ. As we live our lives, we are in constant walk with Christ. He never leaves us, and there is nothing outside of the walk; that is, our very steps into the future are our walk with Christ. Meditation allows us to tap into the reality above our day-to-day life: the presence of Christ by our side walking with us.

This is particularly lost in the modern world and meditation becomes that much more important. We get swept up in the distractions of the world and almost forget completely about the reality that is much more real than our day-to-day. The very mode of thinking becomes stuck. We do the most unhuman and unnatural thing for humans: forget the relationship with Christ. We can remember Christ through our inundated lens, but this forgets the relational aspect of fully experiencing the indescribable presence of Christ.  

I often meditate on the past in order to understand the present. I looked at an old photo album today and saw my parents. I meditated on their position as recently arrived immigrants—poor, scared, and working all the time. I felt so ungrateful for my current position and I felt like I had an infinite debt owed to them. This taste of being truly loved is a fraction of what God feels for us and what he’s done for us. The true depths are unfathomable.

Embracing Weakness and Finding Strength in God’s Power

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But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

  • 2 Corinthians 12:9-10

God’s power is often shrouded in mystery because it isn’t obvious to us in our daily lives. We read about it in the Bible, through miracles and various acts, but experiencing it firsthand is rare. This elusive nature makes it challenging for us to fully grasp or understand God’s omnipotence.

Omnipotence is an abstract concept that is difficult for us to comprehend. It is a philosophically complex topic. We might think of strength or power in terms of our everyday lives, but these are imperfect glimpses of true omnipotence. The power to create nature, the universe, and even our own minds and bodies is so far beyond our understanding; its magnitude renders it ineffable and we cannot get our minds around this infinite power.

God’s power is seen directly all throughout the Old Testament. Miracles provide a tangible example of God’s power. They represent God’s ability to interrupt the natural order with His divine will and breaking the very laws we consider immutable. This is why miracles can be hard to believe; they defy the logic and understanding of the human mind. For Christians, recognizing this power should inspire reverence and guide our daily lives. Forgetting God’s power means missing a crucial aspect of who God is which leads to an incomplete worship.

However, in the New Testament, we mostly see them through the miracles of Jesus. There are a few exceptions. Notably, the blinding of Paul, which led to his conversion. Arguably, this is also through Jesus, as he was the one he met on Damascus road and received censure for persecuting Christians. The giving and taking of his vision led to the conversion of Paul.

Thinking about what Paul experiences is revealing. Being blinded is a traumatic experience and undercuts whatever status Paul believed he had in persecuting Christians. God’s power shattered his worldview and it all changed in a moment. God’s power also restored his vision and, symbolically, helped him see the world clearer through his conversion.

We also see God’s power through the ultimate miracle of the resurrection of Christ. It’s the most supernatural event. Conquering death and sin. It destroys all of our anxiety, doubt, and angst. We can confidently move forward under the authority and strength of God; we know he is our ally so long as we have faith. This is the ultimate gift. God’s power is always there and it has the potential to change everything at any moment. Understanding this can bring us out of thinking we have things under our control or that things are hopelessly beyond our control. Faith in God’s power is what motivates and moves us.

When we meditate on God’s power, we become acutely aware of our own weaknesses. However, it is through these weaknesses that God’s power is perfected. We can take solace in knowing that our limitations are part of a greater, infinite power. Any strength we perceive in ourselves pales in comparison to God’s power. When we see others wielding power, we must remember that it is insignificant next to God’s omnipotence. We should not fear but respect human power, always keeping in mind its insignificance compared to the divine. God’s power is always with us.