Dear God
Letters to the Lord
5-1-22
Dear God:
I've been feeling blah lately, like I'm falling into a depression again. Mainly people have been getting to me, as they usually do, and have done my entire life. I've beaten back those feelings with Your help and I've tried to love them as You tell us we must do.
But, damn, it's hard. How do you love people who hate you? How do you love people who ignore you? How do you love people who do everything they can to make your life miserable? How do you love people who frankly don't deserve your love and would throw it away if they got it anyway?
I know there are two virtues You wanted me to learn in this life: Patience and Love. I've been working on patience for five years and I can understand that virtue and have been doing pretty well with it. This love virtue is a different animal. I'm at a lost with it most times, and I'm not talking about romantic love, which is not what You are talking about either. You are talking about the love Jesus has for us.
When Jesus walked the earth, he loved everyone. But that didn't mean he didn't rebuke people, or yell or feel indignation. He did, but he had love for those people too. How? How do you do all those things to people and still love them? How do you let people do all those things to you and still love them?
I'm dense and dumb. I know that. Love is everything You are Lord and I don't have a clue what that is. Sad really. But if I live long enough, maybe I will get it someday. I'll understand love and it will finally be clear. But you have to help me God. I can't do it on my own.
Finally, I've been feeling like You have been abandoning me lately. I haven't really heard from You or felt Your presence in months. I dreaded that I might be falling into the dark night of the soul again. Ugh. Not that again. But then I was watching the TV show "The Chosen" and was watching the scene where Jesus was physically having dinner with Mary and some of his disciples and I thought "wouldn't that be great to have Jesus sit down to dinner with you?"
Immediately, even before I finished that thought, a loud voice came into my head † "He does, everyday in the Eucharist!" † DUH! See what an idiot I am. Jesus is with us everyday. Really, physically present everyday. There is a dinner with Jesus everyday in the Eucharist at Mass. Napoleon, if you want to sit down with Jesus to eat , go to Mass and partake in Communion. This is love. Setting a table and waiting for invited guests to show up to provide nourishment, and even if no one shows up or shows up mocking you, keeping the table set and the food full waiting.
I've got a lot of work do with the virtue of love, but thank you Lord for knocking me upside the head sometimes! I have a problem with not seeing the forest for the trees and need a good jolt now and then.
Sincerely,
Napoleon
Very beautiful. Thank you for being candid enough for sharing your conversation with God.
I have conversations like this too, but luckily I don't stay there long. We are instruments and for as long as we try to help, we are doing His work. It is normal to feel beaten down from time to time, but we have to get back up after we have rested. That is what He would like us to do. Rest in Him when needed. You may feel alone, but you can clearly see here that you are not. Don't let them get to you. That's what they want, but know that your thinking is clear.
People were given freewill and they do what they want with it. It is people that is causing the trouble and not God. If God changed everything, there would not be freewill. I chose freewill and freedom, to experience the lows to really appreciate the highs. I seem to be praying for everyone continuously on and off throughout the day, and will include you too.