MPC LENTEN DEVOTIONS

The early church father St. Augustine wrote, “Understanding is the reward of Faith. Therefore, seek not to understand so that you may believe, but believe, so  that you may understand.”  So often, we try to understand what God is all about and dissect, intellectually, what our faith is. We feel it has to ‘make sense to us first, in order for us to believe in it.  But to have genuine faith,  we must come to realize, that we cannot put our GOD into the box of our limited mental capacity to understand who or what GOD is.  GOD is a presence, that only through the true sacrifice of our worldly understanding of things, can be fully glorified, worshiped, and inculcated into our daily lives.  Yes, HE (or she, or non-gender specific) has given us a guidebook, by which to live our lives here in this earthly existence, but much deeper than the guidebook should be our relationship with our creator.  Even though you can’t see or touch GOD, you have to open up your mind’s eye to ‘feel’  the presence of our GOD. There are several examples in scripture where there is an attempt made to describe the presence of GOD, Moses on Mt. Sinai, and my favorite, Genesis 1: “ The Earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and THE SPIRIT OF GOD was hovering over the waters,….”  And then a light appeared.  GOD is a spirit that has no formal definition, but when you fully give yourself over to GOD, you will know within your heart, and it is an indescribable feeling when one truly experiences “Emmanuel” – GOD with us.  And when you have that experience, your faith is consummated and your belief is unswerving, in that no matter what happens in your life, you know that GOD, the true living GOD will not leave you or forsake you, and is the author, and finisher of your  Faith.