“Who is God? Many have asked this question. No one can answer this perfectly. But in a word, he is ‘love.’ Love is the very essence of God. God is perfect love—that of which we, in the flesh, are incapable. We are admonished to love our neighbor and to love our enemies. The Bible tells us that ‘love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres’ (I Cor. 13:4-7, NIV).”—Lessons for Liam
I was talking with a friend the other day about my rather convoluted path through Christianity. It is more than I wish to detail here, but the result has been significant. What I have learned is that God is far bigger than any religion—and certainly any denomination or subset of religion. Often, people who claim to be “spiritual” are met with scorn by the religious. While many, who claim to be spiritual, are indeed wandering, this is not to say that all are “lost”. When I write about the Spiritual dimension of well-centered fitness, I often make the statement that religion can get in the way of true Spiritual well-centeredness. Not that religion is bad or that I dismiss my faith in God and Christ. Rather I prefer to seek the “bigger God”. The God who is “love”. The God who is eternal.
I define the Spiritual dimension as the knowledge that there is something bigger than self—that I am not the center of the Universe. It is central to my mantra, “I am third”—i.e., my God is first, my family and friends are second, and I am third. Pure religion, we are taught, is to care for the widowed and the orphaned (James 1:27)—that is, to care for those in need. Thus, putting others first should be our “religion”.
Be your best today; be better tomorrow.
Carpe momento!