The Almighty, True, living God is never hard to find. In other words, GOD IS NOT HARD TO FIND, for He may be quickly discovered by reason and faith, by our strivings, or by His own gift. Alleluia! Alleluia! God be praised, forever. Amen! Saint Thomas tells us that our faith and reason looking upon the order of the universe immediately concludes there is some governor behind it. 

As the mind concludes to a watchmaker on seeing the watch, so, too, it concludes to a Divine Mind on seeing the order of the cosmos. This immediate knowledge of God, however, is not clear and distinct; that is why a more refined study is necessary to bring out the nature of God. The distinction between this confused knowledge of God and the reflex-refined knowledge that comes with the formal proofs for His existence is very much like the difference between the knowledge that most people have to water and the knowledge that the chemist has of it as composed of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen. Reason clearly used can prove that there is a Power behind the universe, which made it, a Wisdom directing its law, and a Will to make all things attain their goal. God is closer to us than we know,

"Yet in fact he is not far from any of us, since it is him that we live, and move, and exist, as indeed some of your own writers have said: "We are all his children". - Acts 17:28 -

Saint Teresa once said, "Some unlearned men/women used to say to me that God was present only by His Grace. I could not believe that because as I was saying, He seemed to me to be present Himself. Finally, a learned man/woman delivered me of his/her doubt for he/she told me that God was present in the world and in us and how He communed with us, and this was a great comfort to me." Francis Thompson, the poet, elaborating on the idea of Saint Thomas that God is in all things intimately wrote, 

                                      O world invisible, we view thee,

                                      O world intangible, we touch thee,

                                      O world unknowable, we know thee,

                                      Inapprehensible, we clutch thee!

God is easy to discover in at least a confused and primitive sort of way through every striving and aspiration of our will and our heart. For the great difference between an animal and a human is that an animal can have its desires satisfied but a human cannot. All that any animal wants is to have its immediate needs granted; this is never the case with man/woman. Man/Woman is animated by an urge, an unquenchable desire to enlarge his/her vision and to know the ultimate meaning of things. If he/she were only an animal, he/she would never use symbols, for what are these but attempts to transcend the visible? No, he/she is a "metaphysical animal," a being ever longing for answers to the last question. The natural tendency of the intellect towards truth and of the will toward love would alone signify that there is in a man/woman a natural desire for God. There is not a single striving or pursuit or yearning of the human heart, even in the midst of the most sensual pleasures, that is not a dim grasping after the Infinite. As the stomach yearns for food and the eye for light and the ear for harmony, so the soul craves God.

There are many who mistake the nature of this Infinite and seek to satisfy the craving elsewhere than in God, just as there are those who know that food is necessary for the stomach and nevertheless ruin their stomachs by constant diet of gin. Many a soul is like a magnetic needle that quivers first here, then there, seeking at morning when it flees at night, and then, finding all the other compass points to be a fraud, it comes at last to rest in God alone.

God is not hard to find, because He gives Himself to us as the Divine Gift. Natural life itself is a gift. The soul has to come into a body from without, directly as a gift from the hands of God. And the supernatural life, too, is given to us from without. The whole meaning of Christianity is contained in the simple phrase of the creed, "He descended from Heaven." To each single soul, Our Lord Jesus addresses the words He spoke to the Samaritans woman at the well: "If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water" - John 4:10 - As Saint/Apostle Paul told the Romans, "The grace of God, life everlasting, in Christ Jesus our Lord." - Romans 6:23 - And later on, to the Ephesians, "By grace you are saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, for it is the gift of God." - Ephesians 2:8 -

God is presented simultaneously through the Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible as both the Gift and the Giver, for such is the nature of Love. No one can buy the Divine Gift (though one may sell it, after it has been received, as Judas Iscariot did.) If God's gift were truth alone, some feeble minds might shrink from seeking it. If the gift were justice alone, our sins might arise and frighten the gift away. But when God's gift is love, then there should be none who would not take His Heart as theirs.  

If, then, God is so easy to find and can be discovered either through the beauty of the stars or in every tiny pleasure of earth, which like a seashell speaks of the ocean of Divinity, why is it that so few souls come to Him? The fault is on our side, not God's. Most souls are like people living in a dark room during the daytime and complaining that the night is hard to find - when all that they need do to discover it is to raise the blinds. 

God is the most obvious fact of human experience. If we are not aware of Him, it is because we are too complicated and because our noses are lifted high in the air in pride, for lo! He is at our very feet. We need only to "turn a stone and start a wing." The grace of God comes to us in just the degree that we open our souls to it; the only limit to our capacity to receive Him is our willingness to do so. Some thirsty hearts open up only a crevice, while others, with complete abandon, surrender their empty cisterns to be filled with the waters of life. A few souls suffocate, locked in their own unconscious minds with their loathsome frustrations and fears, refusing to open the door and let in the refreshing air of God's grace. "Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me." - Revelation 3:20 -

The latch is on our side and not on God's, for God breaks down no doors. We bar His entrance. Sometimes we even run away from Him, like chicks in flight from a mother hen. "How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!" - Matthew 23:37 -

Why do we behave so? It is hard to believe, but we have the Divine warrant for it that some people "love darkness rather than light." The added tragedy of sin is that after we do wrong we may not let God help us do what is right and good. We smash the bow so that He cannot play on our violin. We keep Him at arm's length because we refuse to be loved. We are drowning and will not clutch at His helping Hand because in our pride we say that we must "work this thing out ourselves." The truth of the matter is, not that God is hard to find, but rather that we are afraid of being found. That is why we so very often hear in Sacred Scripture/Holy Bible the words "Fear not." At the very beginning of Divine life in Bethlehem, the angels found it necessary to warn the shepherds, "Fear not." In the midst of Our Lord's public life He had to tell his frightened Apostles, "Fear not." And after His Resurrection Christ Jesus had to preface His words on peace with the same injunction, "Fear not."

Our Lord Jesus Christ finds it necessary to warn us not to fear because there are 'Three False Fears' that keep us away from God: (1) We want to be saved, but not from our sins. (2) We want to be saved, but not at too great a cost. (3) We want to be saved, but in our own way, not God's.

Divinely wise souls often infuriate the worldly-wise because they always see things from the Divine point of view. The worldly are willing to let anyone believe in God if he or she pleases, but only on condition that a belief in God will mean no more than belief in anything else. They will allow God, provided that God does not matter. But taking God seriously is precisely what makes the saint. As Saint Teresa put it, "What is not God to me is nothing." This passion is called snobbish, intolerant, stupid, and unwarranted intrusion; yet those who resent it deeply wish in their own hearts that they had the saint's inner peace and happiness.

And so this question of whether God is hard to find puts the answer solely up to us. Most of us are like the man who had lain at the Pool of Probatica for thirty-eight years and was not cured. His excuse was that, when the waters were stirred, there was no one to put him in: He needed healing, but he really did not want it. There are many like him, who remain just as they are, blaming others for their condition, exonerate, vindicate and practices self-justification. What had been wanted was his will. The man was moribund because he did not want to be better, even it is possible where he can and will be cure, that is, knowing that God does exist. So many unbelievers and believers of God are like that and so many failures in life are, like his, avoidable, needless; they persist only because no effort is made to remedy the condition. We today say we do not want war; but we want the things that cause war. In the same way, there are many who say they want to be happy, blissful, contended and etc, but they refuse to want that which will bring them authentic happiness. 

"I know the plans I have in mind for you - it is Yahweh who speaks - plans for peace, not disaster, reserving a future full of hope for you. Then when you call to me, and come to plead with me, I will listen to you. When you seek me you shall find me, when you seek me with all your heart; I will let you find me" (- it is Yahweh who speaks. I will restore your fortunes and gather you from all the nations and all the places where I have dispersed you - it is Yahweh who speaks. I will bring you back to the place from which I exiled you.) - Jeremiah 29:11-14 -                                         

"Enoch walked with God. Then he vanished because God took him." - Genesis 5:24 - 

"It was because of his faith that Enoch was taken up and did not have to experience death: he was not to be found because God had taken him. This was because before his assumption it is attested that he had pleased God. Now it is believe that God exists and rewards those who try to find him." - Hebrews 11:5-6 -

BY  VENERABLE  FULTON  J.  SHEEN

To fall in love with God is the greatest of romance, to seek Him the greatest adventure, to find God the greatest achievement. - Saint Augustine of Hippo -

 -    WELCOME TO SACRED SCRIPTURE / WORD OF GOD / HOLY BIBLE READER'S COMMUNITY    - 

Wishing you, 'Happy Reading', and may God, the Father, the Son of the living God, Jesus Christ, fills your heart, mind, thoughts, and grants you: The Holy Spirit, that is, Wisdom, Knowledge, Understanding, Counsel, Piety, Fortitude, Fear of the Lord, and also His fruits of the Holy Spirit, that is, Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Trustfulness, Gentleness and Self-Control. Amen! God blessing be upon you!

Why do you call Me, "Lord, Lord" and not do what I say?' "Everyone who comes to Me and listens to My words and acts on them - I will show you what he/she is like. He/She is like a man/woman who when he/she built his/her house dug, deep, and laid the foundations on rock; when the river was in flood it bore down on that house but could not shake it, it was so well built. But the one who listens and does nothing is like the man/woman who built his/her house on soil, with no foundations: as soon as the river bore down on it, it collapsed; and what a ruin that house became!" - Luke 6:46-49 - 

If we live by the truth and in love, we shall grow in all ways into Christ Jesus, who is the head by whom the whole body is fitted and joined together, every joint adding its own strength, for each separate part to work according to it function. So the body grows until it has built itself up, in love." - Ephesians 4:15-16 - 

I still have many things to say to you but they would be too much for you now. But when the spirit of truth comes, he will lead you to the complete truth, since he will not be speaking as from himself, but will say only what he has learnt; and he will tell you of the things to come. He/She will glorify me, since all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine. Everything the Father has is mine; that is why I said: all he/she tells you will be taken from what is mine." - John 16:12-15 -

Your generous contribution and support is profoundly cherish. I sincerely pray that: God blessing be upon you, always. Amen! Bank transfer: Name: Alex Chan Kok Wah - Public Bank Berhad account no. 4076577113 - Country: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.