After almost a month, another article of mine has found a space in the Collegian newspaper. Yahooo! Read on and click the photo is you like to be transported somewhere:-)*****
I pondered how God has viewed our being individuals, whose moment of stillness has not been so apparently fulfilled. The line in the Bible that says "Be still, and know that I am God," really means, in its complete contemporary biblical setting, "Cease, relax and shut up! Spare time for me and know that I am God."
In one of Father Paul's homilies last Holy Week, the same verse came out, and I was taken back to the time when I devotedly listened to God in the stillness of my heart.
Knowing I haven't read anything religious printed in The Collegian since I started writing late last year, I thought that this would be the start of something different. A few days ago, someone close to me asked, "Are you not reluctant to write about God in your column?"
"With what God has done for me all these years, writing won't even be enough," I answered without reservations.
A few years ago, a dear friend gave me a book called, "The Purpose Driven Life." I heard that it was a bestseller - students read it during bouts of silence in bus rides and even successful businessmen browsed the pages inside café houses. Curious, I turned to the page that carries the question, "What makes God smile?"
It says God smiles when people praise and thank him personally. God loves it when praises and adoration are expressed for Him. Prayer is the way to His heart. Prayer, spoken or unspoken, brings miracles.
Lines from the book struck me hard. They reminded me to wake up from the existing state of hallucination to God's wonderful state of reality. To be in that reality is to pray. God commands everyone to pray.
In this lifetime, many times I find myself trying to square circles with only God's armor to cling to. With a firm foundation in Him, those times would equate to believing and claiming what He has promised, that I could move mountains and that when legions of principalities turn up my way, I could never be taken apart.
Look around. There are a lot of spiritual warriors at SDSU. Visit the Pius XII Newman Center or the many Christian churches around Brookings and notice that the majority of the churchgoers are students. That doesn't happen in other Christian countries, believe me.
When I lived in the Netherlands for two years, only the elderly attended services. Here, though, I was left open-mouthed and overly astounded on my first attendance, as college students flocked to the church.
In a liberated country like the U.S., my idea of a church service is no more than what I experienced in Europe - that only a few teenagers still believe in God's great promises. I was proven wrong, though, at the sight of an army of God - students earnestly praying, standing with truth as the belt and righteousness as the breastplate, ready to announce the Good News. Young men and women that I first thought knew no place but a pub were present.
I call these students in church the warrior children - they, who drop their swords, run toward God and take refuge in His quiet place of rest, even for just one day a week. Amen, for each student and every living soul inside the church. Amen, for all the desires of their hearts, which I am certain, will be answered in God's precious time.
In Brookings, most students, if not all, are companions on the journey. They are the warrior children, how they have prayed. This, they all know, would make God smile even more.
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4 Comments:
Hiya Rick and who is God to you?
for me GOD IS LOVE!!! :)
Happy TGIF.
ayo ayo diha kanunay.
April 13, 2007 2:12 AM
Who is God ?in my heart
Ephesians 2: 4 But God, who is rich in mercy, for His Great Love with which he loved us.
1 John 4: 7-9 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loves is born of God, and knows God. He that loves not, knows not God; for God is Love.
April 13, 2007 3:15 PM
take care too Lolli..:-)
April 13, 2007 5:49 PM
this is very interesting, tc and have a good weekend.
April 20, 2007 9:43 AM
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