Walking Alone
This article is my commentary on these interesting articles. I suggest reading these articles first and then finishing up with mine.
- Seeing Is Not Believing: Why We Miss God in Daily Life | Desiring God
- We Are in a Spiritual Battle (catholicexchange.com)
The central message in both of these articles is that many of us choose to walk through our lives without God. We work, eat, sleep, and find various leisure activities but it’s all in a very secular way. We fail to acknowledge God’s influence on our lives throughout our day. Not living with God results in a bleak worldview because we see nothing beyond what can be seen, heard, and explained.
Ignoring God at Our Peril
When we seek answers but then deliberately ignore God’s response, we often receive an inaccurate view of reality. We get information through the lens of politics, media, and big business; all of which have their own interests. Their interests usually don’t include providing you peace, truth, and joy. For example, we may have fears about climate change or Covid. But listening solely to the media or government mouthpieces will give you a distorted view of how you should respond. If you want peace, perspective, and truth, you need to include God in the conversation through prayer.
I’m not saying that you completely ignore all worldly sources of information. Science does a good job of explaining the nature of the physical world around us. Engineering, technology, mathematics, etc. have given us wonderful inventions and improved our standard of living. But there is so much more to our lives than what these fields can explain. We may know the science to create a Covid vaccine or engineer an iPhone. But science and secular psychology can’t show us how to live with true joy. For that, we need to have God in our worldview.
God helps us navigate our fears, anxieties, and all the other aspects of our modern lives. Science may be able to explain Covid and even treat it, but God helps us manage our fears and concerns around it. I think many people are so fearful of Covid, climate change, or the issue of the day because they don’t listen to any higher authority than their social media feeds. They don’t want to listen to God and hear His guidance for navigating our lives amidst these challenges. Take God’s voice out of any current issue and you’re left with a bleak outlook on the world governed by whoever is yelling the loudest.
Finding our Daily “Awe of God”
If you’re looking to bring God into your daily life, pray the Fourth Luminous Mystery of the Rosary — The Transfiguration. When I think of Jesus rising into the sky and turning a dazzling white, I envision the sense of awe St. Peter, James, and John must have felt. I think we need to have a sense of awe of God (traditionally known as “Fear of God”) throughout our day. We need to acknowledge God at work in the very large and the very small.
This is becoming a theme in my posts, but I’m saddened by the drop in regular Mass attendance in my parish since the Covid lockdowns. I think there is a strong correlation between the drop in Mass attendance and the increasing unhappiness many people are feeling. Secularism doesn’t give people a very good means of finding joy. Ever wonder why babies and small children are so happy? Everything in their world has a sense of awe to it. When Jesus said we should be more like children (Matthew 18:3), perhaps he is calling us to regain some of that childlike awe regarding our faith. I think attending Mass and praying will help us find that awe as we start to acknowledge God at work in our lives.