Grasping Hold of God

Here I lay on the patio, on a chaise lounge, the third day of a new fall. The sun is bright but setting and the shimmering leaves glisten, backlit by that radiant ball of fire, giving the atmosphere an ambiance ethereal. The leaves crackle in the strong breeze, snapping ever more crisply as their life’s blood retreats back into the roots of their mother tree, disappearing until the dawn of spring next year.

The wispiness of the moment leaves me hanging, suspended in a state between the last event of my life and the next, free of what has been done and what needs to be done. Are these the times when I allow God’s loving tendrils to permeate my mind? Is this when God can best speak to me? I have a sense that it is.

But, before long I become aware of the state of my being and become enthralled by the freedom it provides. In my desire to grab hold of the moment and keep it as a remembrance, I find my laptop and begin to write, to possess the moment. In so doing that moment in God fades away, a mystical moment that I desired to wrap my arms around only to embrace myself.

St. Isaac of Nineveh, Mystic

Here is another teaching of the mystic St. Isaac of Nineveh as paraphrased by Scott Cairns in his book of insights from the mystics in verse form, Endless Life. What follows provides some aspects of hell that you may not have considered.

Gehenna, Its Duration

Even in the matter of afflictions

-          The judgement of Gehenna, say –

there abides a hidden mystery, whereby

            the Maker has taken as a starting point

our patent willfulness, using even Hell

            as a way of bringing to perfection

His greater dispensation.

If the world to come proves entirely the realm

            of mercy, love, and goodness,

how then a final state that claims 

            requital for its measure?

That we should think that hell

            is not also full

of love and mingled with compassion

            would be an insult to our God.

By saying He will deliver us

            to suffering without purpose, we

most surely sin. We blaspheme also if we say

            that He will act with spite or with a vengeful purpose,

as if  He had a need to avenge Himself.