Love him with all you've got

Deuteronomy 6:5 Love God, your God, with your whole heart; love him with all that’s in you; love him with all you’ve got.

I had a very difficult week-end, full of stress and the feeling that things had backslid terribly. I was feeling discouraged, depressed, hopeless, futile, anxious and despairing about my situation. Then this verse arrested me and made me think.

If I am really trying to do what is described here, is there room for anything else? If this is my plan for the day, all my anxieties fall into place; none of them is about this and yet this is what’s important. So can I let go of the circumstances that call forth despair and hopelessness and just focus on God and how I can love God with everything that I have and everything that I am? If I attend to God, perhaps I don’t need to attend to anything else.

So I asked myself, how will I love and worship God today? And the answer came: by caring for myself, caring for my partner and my family; by using gentleness and kindness instead of anger and judgment, compassion instead of hate, for myself as well as for others; by holding fast to my goal and God’s promise in the face of doubt and fear and lack of progress; by moving forward even when the pace is painfully slow; by rejoicing in all my blessings and working to manifest God’s peace and beauty in my physical surroundings; by loving life, creation and all whom I meet; by holding it all reverently, being present with it all using an open and compassionate heart; by being present; by being.

Prayer: Dear God, You fill my life with unending joy and peace if I can only stay open to You. Bring my attention to Your will for my life so that everything else sits in proper perspective to the overpowering awe of Your Presence. Amen.