I thing I know

For everything has the potential of calling forth in us (me) a more loving response to our (my) life forever with God. Our only desire and our one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me.

"God who loves us creates us and wants to share life with us forever. Our love response takes shape in our praise and honor and service of the God of our life.
All the things in this world are also created because of God’s love and they become a context of gifts, presented to us so that we can know God more easily and make a return of love more readily.

As a result, we show reverence for all the gifts of creation and collaborate with God in using them so that by being good stewards we develop as loving persons in our care for God’s world and its development. But if we abuse any of these gifts of creation or, on the contrary, take them as the center of our lives, we break our relationship with God and hinder our growth as loving persons.

In everyday life, then, we must hold ourselves in balance before all created gifts insofar as we have a choice and are not bound by some responsibility. We should not fix our desires on health or sickness, wealth or poverty, success or failure, a long life or a short one. For everything has the potential of calling forth in me a more loving response to my life forever with God.

My only desire and my one choice should be this: I want and I choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me."

Ignatius from his Spiritual Exercises
Draw me into Your Friendship: The Spiritual Exercises, page 27)

I am often challenged by this statement that . . . everything has the potential of calling forth in me a more loving response to God.

I don’t always feel like some of my life circumstances call me forward. On the surface I see little of what I would call God, however, God is teaching me to be patient. Circumstances are not always what they appear to be on the surface. I am learning what faith is – faith in a loving, personal Creator, who made me – yes, Lori Ann Mero Tate - in his image to reflect who he is. A loving God who calls me and invites me to walk along side him and be part of his Kingdom work and in the process be changed myself.

There are lots of things I don’t know – why my friends have cancer; how to be a good mom; how God created the world; how to be a supportive wife or a good spiritual director; to be a great kids ministry leader; how to handle elderly parents and young children, but the ONE thing I do KNOW is I want choose what better leads to God’s deepening life in me. . . .

So I try to keep things simple by looking at each of day through those lenses – what leads me to a deeper life in Christ? What draws me away from Him?