The Quest for God

Our recollections of happiness are glimpses. They have much to do with our age, our state of mind, our expectations, our innocence even

It is only when we escape from time, as well as space, that we can possibly begin to imagine what Heaven will be like. When astronauts are being trained for trips into space, one of the things they have to learn is to cope with weightlessness. Coping with timelessness is far more difficult. In fact we would not know how to start. The very word ‘start’ is time-bound. We and our bodies are more thoroughly prisoners of time than we are held captive by space. We can move now at will on this earth-and will soon move about space with comparative freedom-but we cannot get out of the time dimension at all. Even when we have the peculiar experience of flying West and appearing to gain hours-or even if we cross the Pacific capturing a whole extra day-it is always taken away from us in the end. It it an illusion that we can escape from time, even for an instant, in this world. Yet that is precisely the first thing we do when we enter the next, and therein lies the huge difference and the chief obstacle to imagining it. No satiation, no culmination, no climax, no boredom, no repetition, no expectation or recollection, no delay or waiting, no sense of time passing, nothing impending or imminent or changing-just one timeless instant of total ecstasy.

Almighty and eternal God, I thank you for having created the world, for having created me and put me on it, and for giving me family, friends and a job to do. I thank you especially for giving all of us the gift of free will.

Human beings are ingenious and resourceful creatures and, being such, do great things, become self-congratulatory and suffer from hubris. Man must be perpetually on watch against the sin of pride, the real killer, of souls as well as bodies. The scriptures say that God not only made man in his own image, but gave him dominion over the earth and all that is on it.

Moderns are not used to questioning themselves about God. Often, they do not wish to inquire-the answers might be disquieting-or, if they are not afraid of the answers, they do not know how to put the questions. These are no-go areas to the modern mind, unexplored territory. Many say to themselves-or rather, they do not exactly say so, but it goes unsaid-‘Let sleeping gods lie.’

The Bible says, ‘The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’

The fact that we have the altruistic urge-as well as the evil one-is the great safeguard of the well-meaning atheists.

We are not so virtuous as the angels, or so beautiful or powerful, but we are much more interesting.