Loving God

1 0

Before I started my Master’s program, I thought I knew enough about our faith. I’ve been Catholic all my life, went to catechism even in the non-Sacramental prep years (not that I remember anything I learned specifically during that time), have been involved in ministry for over twenty years since then, and even took three years of classes at our diocese’s Institute for Lay Ministry.

Oh how wrong I was.

The first class I took was Salvation History, and I thought, “Well, lets see if I’ll learn anything new here”, because just the year prior I finished Bible in a Year with Fr. Mike Schmitz, who goes through Salvation History.

The Bible in a Year setup – all the work Jeff Cavins has done with it and Fr. Mike’s podcast – are amazing and good. But they just scratch the surface. This isn’t trying to knock what they’re doing, because I believe that’s part of their purpose, to scratch at the surface that the majority of Christians remain on so that we can start to go deeper

There was SO MUCH I learned.

And now, I’m six classes through and halfway to the end. And I must say, I still know very little. It’s like the earth we live on. Most of us just live our whole lives on top of the crust. We know that there’s a lot under the surface, but we remain up top. Even those who dig into the earth – mining resources or just exploring, aren’t able to go too far into its depths.

I actually just looked up how deep we’ve gone. The deepest drills/probes is only 7ish miles down – still within the crust of the earth. With all the advances in science and engineering, humans have barely scratched the surface of the earth God created for us. How can we possibly even begin to think we can understand God?

Even though we will never fully comprehend God, that doesn’t mean we can’t know more about God. “But what’s the point if can never fully know God? ” you might ask. Because that is God’s desire. He wants us to know Him more so we can love Him more.

In future posts, I’ll be sharing some of the things I’ve learned, because you might be where I was in thinking you know enough (you don’t). And this isn’t me thinking I know more than you, but there just might be some things I know that you don’t (just as there is plenty that you know that I don’t).

God loves us so deeply and wants us to love Him back as much as we can. And that means learning about Him.

But if we “understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if [we] have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, [we are] nothing” (1 Cor 13:2).
All the learnings should inspire us to love and serve others more. It can’t be just knowledge of the sake of knowledge. We can’t love God in a silo. That knowledge and love of God should impress upon us how imperative it is to love others – even a surface level reading of the Gospels tells us that. And we can’t lose sight of that.

It is tempting to want to learn in a silo. To just hole up in my office and study and do well and learn, and just be content or proud of how much I know about God. And I think if I wasn’t married I’d give in fully to this. Because although I might know more than my wife about God and the Church, she knows God’s heart better. She has such a desire to serve and to give and to love, and she reminds me (sometimes indirectly and sometimes not so indirectly) to do the same.

So whether you continue to read my posts to learn more about God or continue your journey elsewhere, please remember the goal is to love, serve, and glorify God by loving and serving others.

About Post Author

Deepu

homedeepu@gmail.com

Happy

0 0 %

Sad

0 0 %

Excited

0 0 %

Sleepy

0 0 %

Angry

0 0 %

Surprise

0 0 %