A Prayer for Your Life of Faith

Beloved Heavenly, Father, I thank You for Your grace, and for shielding me while I experience struggle from my childhood until now.  During those years, I have been apprehensive of any humiliation or shame that Heaven might suffer.

There is nothing among all the good things on this earth more precious than connecting to Your original heart.

Knowing this, we should eternally have a longing for that relationship with You.

We should keep in mind that those who experience Your love will have no regrets, even if they forget about all the things of this world.

We must now seek the ideal world which You created, the original homeland where we live by Your love.

We must prepare today while on earth for our third life as liberated children endowed with the authority of freedom.

Just as we needed to be healthy in the womb in order to be born with a healthy life on earth, we need a wholesome earthly life to have a wholesome life in heaven.

The world today is a world of conflict dominated by evil.  

We must be resolved to fight to the death in order to be blessed with the cooperation of heaven and earth and to keep in step with the dynamics of fortunes of the universe.

We must resolve that our descendants will never have to be placed in such a sorrowful position as we have been suffering under the dominion of sin.

Beloved Father, when we reflect on how you have toiled to usher in a new spring, we should become Your infinitely grateful and joyous daughter and sons who lament over the fact we could not offer our entire life and love to You.

In our predestined relationship with You, our lives were meant to be harmonized, and completed by You so that we too may greet the new spring.

Only when we greet spring for the first time is when the flowers bloom.  Just as flowers go through summer and autumn before bearing fruit and blooming, we too are to undergo a similar process to bear fruit.

For a tree to bear any fruit, it absorbs life elements through the roots, trunk and branches in the summer.

There, it concentrates a perfect life to bring forth a second life.

Similarly, we must become sons and daughters who are introspective and determine whether we have a life for which swells up in our hearts capable of rebirth in a new world even if our bodies should die.

No matter how much time passes or how much the storm rages, our inner life force must withstand the intrusions of the environment and persevere persistently on the path of growth.

Only in this way, can we welcome the new spring and become a seed, that is the original source of a second life, which can be planted again.

Even though we may look pathetic externally, if we maintain our value as the original essence that can enhance the spiritual life force as a seed that can be planted in the eternal world, we are no longer miserable people even though we may think we are.

Please allow us to realize that the more miserable we appear, the more the value of our internal selves becomes complete and guaranteed..

Father, we realize that if we do not have the desire to serve and bow humbly before You, we can have no relationship with You in the eternal world.

Please, open the doors of our heart to feel Your heart and hear Your voice welling up from the depths of our hearts.  Guide us to regain our lost bodies today.

Father, help us to appreciate Your historical course of toil and trouble to find each of us that we can then humbly bow our heads before You.

Return for Tomorrow's Post: The Root of Promiscuious Sex

This post was rewritten and derived from the book Cheon Seong Gyeong Book Five, Chapter One, Section 1, 1-4

 

Life of Faith Toughest School

If you say that a school is good, usually it has an intense and demanding curriculum.  Religious life can be compared to going to school. Do you want to join a very simple, easy-going religion?

Members of other churches go to church Sunday morning and sit on cushioned seats. All they have to do is write out their contribution card and tithe weekly, and that's it. But here you have to raise funds. Some of you have been kidnapped by deprogrammers. There are incredible differences.



Reverend Sun Myung Moon


Of course a person that is healthy is able to digest things that a sick person would not be able to handle.  By the same token, when you have a healthy mind, you, also, can digest anything: democracy, communism, and any philosophy.

Which -ism do you think a movement such as this belongs?  Godism.  Also, Unificationism, which is concerned with uniting things.

Is it easy to unite things?

We each have five senses, plus the limbs, and the beauty of each component comes from its harmony with the whole.  The eyes do not say, "I do not want to belong to that community.  I want to be all by myself."

Even nature observes such laws of the Principle while humanity has turned away from it through choice.

Here, we have five different colors of skin coming from all different parts of the world.  Our goal is to unite them into one family of man.

This church-life of fundraising, witnessing and working around the world for world restoration is complex.

We are into boat building, the fishing industry, and later we will go to the deep mountains digging miles into the earth for minerals.  What are the goals through pushing members into these incredible experiences?

You are being made into people who cannot be defeated.  That is people who are so capable that there is no one who can keep up with you.

Through this difficult training, you are learning how to totally digest many ways of living.  Through the hardships and incredible experiences, you will become great teachers whom people ask for advice.

Then our question boils down to one central point: Is there a God?

We broke down in three previous points how the theory of evolution leaves out God in the answer to the origin of the universe.

Ultimately, our question boils down to one central point: Is there a God?

There are two contrasting "blocs" in our world today.

The two worlds are the democratic world, also called the free world, and the other is the communist world. There are a few basic differences.

People of the free world assert that all of creation began with a thought, through the invisible world of the mind, or God.  The communists on the other hand insist that matter is the essence of everything, and thought is formed from matter.

This is the fundamental difference between them.

However, because of the communistic influence that has captured the world, many people in the free world are not aware of the existence of the mind, or spirit because it cannot be seen.

When such a person gets up in the morning they know that they need warm clothing because it is cold, they don't need spirit.

If they could choose an overcoat, they would like mink or sable.  Is it easy to obtain high-quality, expensive things or is it difficult?

If God does exist in the universe, then He would be important to the existence of the creation.  But if this God was only good for fulfilling the external daily requirements such as meals and necessities, what kind of God would He be?

If God was on a mountain, He would not only be on the highest mountain, He would be at the peak of that mountain.  If there was a tree there, God would be at the very top of that tree.

Is it easy to find and discover God?  If God has hidden himself on the earth, if He dwelt in the desert, He would look for the largest desert, like the Sahara.  This is how we reason.

If God was in the midst of the Sahara, even though many people have died along the way in search of Him, there would be many other people who will never stop searching to find Him.

God is that precious.

If He is the most precious thing, and you knew you can find Him in the desert, would you like to go there?  Even if it was at the risk of your lives?

This is the way human nature is.

If God is at the highest point of the mountain, people would not stop climbing up until they reach that pinnacle.

That is the way man is created.  If He was hidden in a cave miles beneath the earth, men will dig and dig and not give up until they reach Him.  This is what man's spiritual nature is inclined to achieve.

Why is that?

While man is in the process of reaching that highest, deepest and widest point, we overcome everything in between.  Once we finally reach the top we become conquerors. Thinking men always feel they want to conquer something which ordinary people do not reach.

It is mans spiritual nature to reach and strive for the utmost.

Would God place Himself where it was easy or difficult to reach?  God would be at the pinnacle, where people could ultimately reach Him through an extraordinary way.  What place are we?


I really want to give people the most precious thing under the sun. Then should I devise a way of life which is easy to live? Or should it be a path full of overwhelming experiences?  Everyone wants to get a Lincoln, if possible, instead of a Ford or Chevrolet. The most beautiful car is the easiest thing to create in the factory, right? No, the most expensive car requires the most care to make.


A lot of investment, extra effort and all kinds of tests went into making a car.

People who buy cars do not think about how difficult it was to build;they just simply enjoy the car.  Even though one created the automobile and wants to ride it, the owner would tell him that he does not belong there.

But, if his car breaks down, who will he need?  He will need an auto mechanic.

The well-dressed rich man who bought the car and the oily mechanic are both connected to that automobile.  What does this analogy mean for us as people of faith?

Would you want to be the passenger in the expensive car, or would you like to be the dirty, oily laborer who made the car?  Anyone can get dressed up and sit in a nice car, but not everyone can create a car from nothing.


Dumb Reverend Moon took the difficult road instead of the easy one, becoming the dirty mechanic. The mechanic who had the ability to create the expensive car has nothing to worry about. If the car breaks down, he can fix it. Even if there isn't a car, he can create one. He has confidence in himself.


Many Americans are proud of the Empire State Building and the once World Trade Center and so forth, but who built them?  Who designed them?

The Trade Center was designed by Japanese and built by the unwealthy.  Americans are proud of such structures, but are they able to build them on their own?

Even if your ancestors were great, working hard to build the things America is now proud of, what abut you?

Descendants of many great people do not care about such things and rather go clubbing and just enjoy life dancing and having a good time.  What can they be proud of other than that?

Young people today are going after fun with no purpose in life. 

No matter how great their past may have been, these young people will decline.

The children of those who had built such great monuments should be able to do something even greater and bigger to leave for the next generations.  Thus, the nation and people will be able to prosper.  We pledge to be people who will be purposeful and prosper.

We shall be the remnant.

Father speaks about growing up in North Korea and the process of activities that work toward restoring the ideal world:

I was born deep in the mountain country of Korea in a little house. I talked about mankind, the universe, and salvation of the nation. My parents thought I must be crazy.

They said, "You are the son of humble peasants.  Think about how to take care of the fields, how to raise the animals."

People around there couldn't comprehend the things that the little boy was talking about, so they said I was a crazy child, and when I became a little older, they said I was a crazy young man, then a crazy adult.

That crazy boy grew up to be a crazy man, then came to the United States, and is still talking about crazy things. I act like a crazy person. People look at me and say that something must be wrong with my brain.

Recently I have been saying that America cannot afford to have Jimmy Carter as President for another four years. Attacking Carter was almost like hitting a stone wall with my own fist. Who would get hurt?

Even if my hand got hurt, I wouldn't stop. But finally the stone wall gave in.

From the average person's point of view, my ideas are a little crazy. You are the followers of that crazy man. Amazing, though you aren't bothered by being called crazy men and women. You became so crazy that you gave up drugs, gave up discos, and you stopped any promiscuous behavior. You are liberated from that.

We are looking at the entire world and are trying to do something about its problem. If I tell you to gather on the East coast, you hop into vans and drive all day and night, and in three days you are all here. If one driver's eyes keep closing, someone else will open his eyes and drive.

Do you think I am so dumb that I don't know anything about these realities? You fundraising members, for example, go out into the streets every day and people yell at you and spit at you. Sometimes you are even shot at.

The best attitude is to go do fundraising as a researcher who is studying the people who hate Moonies. I am also researching all the fundraising members. I push you out, and in the meantime I study what kind of person you are.

The material fundraising members get to study is the extraordinary treatment they receive.

Some are kicked, some are stabbed, and some are hit. I want to see these records. What makes the men and women who can withstand this remain committed to their purpose?

People do not like to suffer, even for themselves, but here my fundraising people are suffering for the sake of others. Not a single benefit comes to them, but they are doing it for the sake of others and for the sake of the world. This is either extremely bad or extremely good; it cannot be in between.

Certainly I don't enjoy tribulation.

I would much rather go to an easy church. But I discovered that an easy path was not going to bring the solution. An extraordinary route had to be found, and I found it.

Once I found that route, I asked you to go all the way and not give up. Do it until it is finished. What you are doing now is becoming dirty, oily car-makers. You have started to build an automobile, so don't stop in the middle; go all the way.

Your fundraising record will remain.

People will recognize your deeds and your certificate will come. Later, a signature will be placed on that certificate, acknowledging you as a master in your field of fundraising, for instance, and then you become a teacher. When you complete a most beautiful car and then you drive it, nobody will say anything critical to you.

Would you rather build a 1981 Lincoln Continental, or buy one from a dealer?

If you build one, when you drive it you are not just driving a car. You are demonstrating what you are and you can be proud of yourself. But if you only talk about your idea and never carry it out, no one will trust your word.

You may buy a car and be proud of it, but people will say that you are just being snobbish, that you really have no right to be proud. But, when you make it and drive it, then you can be proud of your accomplishment and no one will say anything.

The basic difference between you and me is that you would prefer to buy a car from the dealer while I would rather build the car myself. The Unification movement is like that car. I can be proud of it and no one can say I am taking too much credit.

However, I am still working on this car because I haven't gotten the certificate yet from the US government, for example. But eventually the certificate will be processed and the signature will be put on, and then I will proudly testify and proclaim it to the people. Then they will say they are ready to hear me.

My ambition is to make each one of you my coworkers in the factory. Are you the auto buyer, or a coworker? That means you want to get down to work, don't you? Doing this hard work means being disciplined, pushed and taught. As the foreman of the factory, I will not compliment you too much.

I will always discipline and criticize you instead. This is the only way I can make you into top-notch workers. I want to push you so hard that no one is able to compete with me. I want all customers to agree that the best automobile comes from the Moon factory. Would you like that reputation?

The same principle is being applied to boat making. I told our people to make the best boat under the sun, but to make it the cheapest. The only way they can do that is by sacrificially giving themselves. But through this process the most beautiful boat is created, and no one else has a boat that can compete.

With the same spirit we make a society, a nation. If we Moonies make the best kind of nation for the cheapest price, there won't be room for communism to creep in."


Return for Tomorrow's Post: Become Ideal People for Liberation


This Post was rewritten from the speech Things That Are Important to You

Nature Waits Looking 4 True Love

Love is patient, love is kind.
Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not conceited,
does not act improperly, is not selfish, is not provoked,
and does not keep a record of wrongs.  Love finds no joy in
unrighteousness but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things,
believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 

1 Corinthians 2



Who is the owner, the real owner of all of creation?  The Bible states that throughout all of the ages of history, creation has been in lamentation.

Look at chapter eight of the letter to the Romans:


All of creation is groaning in travail. Men cry out to the father and long to become adopted sons.


Who is confident enough to stand before creation without shame?

There are hiking clubs, boy and girl scouts, and nature tours that give us the chance to learn about nature and the natural order of creation.  Through these type of organizations, grass, rocks, animals, and even the soil can be understood in a new light and appreciated from a different point-of-view.  Members of these clubs who try to love nature will grow to become owners in this way.

How does one view the natural world?  God created the world through love...we must wonder how God must have felt during this process of creation.  God's heart of absolute faith, absolute love, and absolute obedience thought even of the fragments of microscopic molecules of minerals the crystals of  diamonds and even the grains of sand with such a heart.

If such detail of love was given to these small entities, how much greater level of faith, love and obedience did He give toward creating the larger creatures?  God invests with a heart in proportion to the value in which the object stands.

"True obedience, true love and true faith become the official standard and model. Thus, before we talk about love and before we talk about faith, if we can fully attend all the created things of the world with absolute love and absolute obedience, we can move into a position of a king greater than God."

This may seem blasphemy to say that man can be just as great as God in value.  God created man to be His object partner in love.

We've have spoken in earlier posts about if man did not exist, God can not truly relinquish His love without a partner.  This is the principle of creation.  God used fundamental principles of unchanging absolute pure faith, absolute love and absolute obedience at the time of Creation for which God had longed.  

Through this standard, the creation becomes an object partner to a true man's needs and liking.  Creation forms a reciprocal interaction of a love relationship with humankind with man as the subject partner and creation as the object partner.

This absolute value system is what prompts people to live for the sake of others.  This is an important matter we must understand.

With this standard of loving and obeying this principle, no matter what the circumstance neither God, man or woman would be able to fall away from the high-standard and ideal world God had at the beginning of creation.  This absolute love must become the foundation for the absolute value system for eternity.

You will never find the owner of love among subjects and objects who do not have a partner in which to give and take with love.   Even God's nature can not perfect love without a partner in which to love.  Is this blasphemy or is it correct?  This is the correct standard.

Who would be happy to eternally feel love on an island?  Do you feel satisfied when you do not have someone in which to share love or would you rather spend eternity alone?  We all find true happiness through the love of another.

A couple becomes a mother or father only in the moment the baby takes their first breath and cries. Let's look at this a little deeper.  Even though the mother goes through the labor pains, gives birth and raises the child, it is the newborn baby that causes the parent to become an owner of love.  A couple can not be a parent without a child.

A child is the object of the parents' love.

That is the root of eternal, unchanging values... Who is the owner of love that makes God, the king of life, into the king of love, the king of the lineage and the owner? We have lived in ignorance of the fact that sons and daughters -- newborn babies -- are the ones who determine the position of ownership held by the parent.


What about God who is the creator and king of love with the king's lineage?  What would make Him the owner of love?  Is it because love comes from God?  It is the sons and daughters, the newborn babies, who determines the position of ownership held by the parents.  When God was about to create man, he modeled man based on the plan of a woman before man was was made from the earth.


God Modeled Nature After Man

Like an artist, God had a plan for His creation, not with creation as the beginning point, but for man to be the true owners of nature as the model to create.  Nature was created to satisfy the desires of man.  Woman thus existed as a precondition for man as well.

"Man was born in accordance to the standard of this invisible concept that existed previously and conditionally. Then how was man born? Since he was born with woman as the precondition, woman could be regarded as the blueprint for man. She was like a blueprint. Man was born in accordance with this. Thus, we cannot deny the fact that man was born for the sake of woman."

Why would God create men to be born for the sake of women and women to be born for the sake of man?  Without a woman, a man does not have a way to be an owner of love.  He would not be able to secure the position of a man as the owner who loves his woman and his sons and daughters.  A man would not be able to bore children without woman and become a parent.

Thus, God created woman as the model to create man.

Where does the standard of absolute value lie?  Through the perfection of ideal love, absolute values are established permanently in the central position.  God, man or elder brother alone cannot achieve this standard.

In order for God to stand in the position of the parent, His son and daughter, Adam and Eve, must proceed into relationship with God’s love as the base.

The same formula of absolute faith, love and obedience can be achieved by having a younger sibling, a wife, also sons or daughters uniting on the foundation of natural law in the position of living for the greater good by representing God.

Thus, in order for God to be the true owner in the position of True Parent, His first son and daughter endowed with His spirit, Adam and Eve, should have first established a relationship with God's love. Instead they followed the Archangel's way of love and his commandment.

Since the first parents did not follow God with absolute faith, love and obedience, God surely worked
throughout the million year history of mankind to return them to the original position to give in take with God's love directly and be born of His lineage.


Return for Tomorrow's Post: Matching Spouses


This text was rewritten and derived from the speech: Loving The Creation As An Owner.

How to Love With God's Heart

 “Above all else, guard your heart,” says the proverb, “for it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4.23).

"In any case, the heart, like a garden, needs protection and cultivation if it is to flourish and break through the forces that warp and distort its impulses."

What does it mean to "keep the heart"?  It means to keep your heart pure and polished.  How?  through cutting through the ego, pride, misperceptions and distortions that cover our hearts. 

How can we purify our hearts and delve into the intrinsically good and pure heart that mirrors the heart of the Creator, our heavenly Father?

The Heart of God

Dr. Martin Luther King said, “At the heart of reality, there is a Heart.”

Behind the human heart, of course, is the divine heavenly Heart.

God’s Heart is the wellspring of His love, the core of His being. This heart impels Him to live for the sake of His children and creation.  What may not be known about God's awesome might and majesty is a fierce concern, intense sensitivity, and incomparable tenderness.  God is the king of love.
 

“Can God enjoy His life without love?” asks Reverend Moon. “No. However omniscient or omnipotent He may be, by Himself alone, He cannot enjoy happiness . . . You say you are happy because you have your parents, your husband or wife, your sweetheart. You say to someone, ‘I am happy because I have you with me . . .’ If that is true with human beings, the same applies to God.”

Jesus addressed his Lord and Creator as “Abba”—Papa (Mark 14.36).
 

More than the most devoted of earthly parents, the Heavenly Father is so passionately concerned with every single one of His children, that no one’s gladness or distress escapes His notice.

“Not one [sparrow] is forgotten before God,” we are assured, and surely each person is “worth more than many sparrows” (Luke 12.6-7).

God's heart works in relation to a partner and it does not stand to be apart or enjoy isolation.  Who can stand as God's true object partner in relation to His heart?

Philosopher Abraham Heschel speaks of a Lord passionately and personally involved with His people. The Bible has the Creator as affected by humanity as a man is by his wife (Hosea and Jeremiah 3.20).

 

God’s heart shapes His ideal, what religious traditions have called the Kingdom of Heaven, the World to Come, the Golden Age.  It is the place where “The dwelling of God is with men,” (Revelation 21.3) as He intended. Intimacy with one’s children, grandchildren and great grandchildren—does any parent desire anything more? In the same way, God’s heart wants eternal closeness with each of His children.

This parental heart means no one is outside its reach. God's grace falls like rain on the worthy and unworthy alike. There are no limits to this love; no sacrifice is too great. He “so loved the world” that He would offer everything He has, even His most beloved Son (John 3.16) that “not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” and be saved (2 Peter 3.9). “Turn to me and be saved,” He cries through the prophet Isaiah, “all you ends of the earth!” (45.22-23).

Indeed, this is a defining characteristic of God’s Heart—no one is outside it. Even those who disobey Him, reject Him or even seek to destroy everything He holds dear are not excluded. His wrath and judgment are ultimately for the purpose of reconciliation, of being together with His children.

Thus there is Jesus’ saying to “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” in imitation of the Creator's characteristics (Matthew 5.44). As Reverend Moon has said, no matter what state human beings are in, “God cannot but love man. You can be so confident as to say, without you, God cannot be happy.”

The impulse to seek joy through loving is too strong for any permanent rejection or estrangement between the Father and any of His children.

God's Heart has three aspects; One is joy, the spirit in which He created the universe.  This is reflected in the infinite varieties of the beauties that make up the creation.  During the creation process, the divine imagination was animated with gladness.


“It was good,” He said of His creation (Genesis 1.10). He was especially joyful in anticipation of sharing His life with responsive children and having them delight in the creation He had made. When human parents happily prepare a nursery and then tearfully welcome a new child into the world, they taste something of God’s heart of joy at the creation.

The Heart of God is the ultimate counterpart to the human heart, and deeper and wider than our own and overflowing with the purest, most profound love. Only His heart so fully, in the words of Blaise Pascal, “fills the soul and heart which He possesses" ... it alone has the capacity to completely stimulate every part of us.

 

Those privileged to have tasted of its fullness have described its intoxicating rapture.

 

“Once the heart of God dwells within you, no matter how lonely you may be you will be filled and the universe will be filled,” states Reverend Moon. “Such a person is infinitely joyful, lacking nothing.”

 

“Ah, my Lord God,” wrote Thomas à Kempis, in, “most faithful lover, when Thou comes into my heart, all that is within me rejoices!”

This is the ultimate happiness and the essence of Heaven. It has been called paradise, nirvana, bliss. Whatever it is called, it is ineffably good and satisfying— an oasis in the desert to the thirsting human heart.

Aspects of God’s Heart
 

This is why the distance from Him that has been the human condition throughout the ages leaves such an ache and restlessness.

As the psalmist expressed it: “As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? My tears have been my food day and night” (42.1-3). Conversely, when Adam sinned, God searched for him in the Garden, calling, “Where are you?”(Genesis 3.9).  This can be views as God's pure Heart could no longer see Adam's impure heart after the fall occurred.

The fall left Heavenly Father and the earthly children in need of fulfillment having lost their "love partner" of one another.  God's heart has experienced much displeasure.  Who can look at God's situation as wonderful throughout history when one peers through the eyes of God looking upon His lost children disconnected from His heart? "The agonies of the world that burden all but the most callous of souls are."

 

Joy over the Creation Hope and Commitment to Restore the Lost Ideal Impulse to Love Sorrow Over Human Suffering

This is an important aspect of the divine heart: sorrow.

God is likened to a human parent that has to endure witnessing their children suffering through a reckless act or worse, as victims of a crime.  God's heart breaks whenever he sees the torment and misery of the world;the senselessness of war, the wretchedness of hunger and poverty, the harshness of disease, the agonies of families torn apart and the devastation of spiritual emptiness.

 “If one part suffers, every part suffers with it,” said St. Paul of the body of believers (1 Corinthians 12.26); how could the Head of the body not suffer? He agonizes with His loved ones as any of His children do with theirs.

“In all their distress, he too was distressed” (Isaiah 63.9), say the Hebrew scriptures of His relationship with His people; He “could bear Israel’s misery no longer” (Judges 10.16). He was even agonized as a mother in labor: “Now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant” (Isaiah 42.14).  Muhammad likewise felt God’s misery, saying in a Hadith, “I see what you do not see and I hear what you do not hear; heaven has groaned, and heaven has a right to groan.”

Not only does God feel the pain of every person, but this is ever amplified by His understanding of what could be, like a dreamer who is far from his ideal, His unrealized vision for the beautiful world He intended. A parent grieves even more painfully over a child’s mistakes and suffering than the child does, because the elder also knows more fully all the potential and hopes and dreams that have been lost.

God had envisioned a Heaven on Earth and higher ideal than the current situation of the world.

Besides His pain arising from compassion, God’s heart aches for the broken communion with His loved ones. He feels the pangs of joys lost, unable to fully share the lives and the loves of His myriad sons and daughters. This frustrated hope is what Asians call “han,” the basis of what theologian Andrew Sung Park calls God’s “wounded heart”.

Yes, God's heart has been broken at the disobedience and suffering of His children.
 

Scriptures reveal the pain of the Parent who has given all yet cannot connect with His children enough.  His love is largely unrequited. “The more I called Israel, the further they went from me...” (Hosea 11.2). This Hebrew verse captures the poignant lament of a heartbroken Father.

"How often I have longed to gather your children together,” He confesses to a rebellious world, “as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing” (Matthew 23.37).

The parent is willing to give without end for the sake of her child, but joy is incomplete when love is not returned. Indeed, He is described as “grieved” over the wickedness and faithlessness of His children (Genesis 6.5-6).

A Christian from California recounts I’ve never really been very good at sharing my faith with people. Then one day I was walking down the street in Berkeley, California, and I saw this big poster of a missing child. 

That poster seemed to speak to me. I realized that God is missing all kinds of children. Day after day, He watches His children killing each other, robbing each other, crumbling down in loneliness and then going to hell. When I thought how I’d run around searching if my own child was missing, I realized I had to testify to my faith with more fervor to help God find His missing children.
 

God is the fountain of hope. This is the third primary aspect of God’s Heart—there is hope that God's ideal which was lost in the beginning can be restored.

This hope gives power to overcome the sorrow, disappointment, and grief.  This force sustains His awesome perseverance, which has been laboring painstakingly and patiently through His representative for the day of the great homecoming.

He fervently seeks among the multitudes of every child who does not know Him. The Bible offers metaphors for the almighty Lord of the universe.

One is the image of a poor woman desperately searching for a lost coin (Luke 15.8-10), as if the omnipotent One forgets all dignity in His urgent efforts to save His children. Another is that of a shepherd, leaving all of his flock to track down the missing one and rejoicing when it is found (Luke 15.4-7).

If a parent's child was taken captive, that parent would sacrifice and offer anything and any amount of ransom if it meant the liberation of their children held in bondage.  God does the same with more intensity using His whole heart and effort toward liberating man from the chains of ignorance and the force of selfishness.

God cannot rest until even those who have committed the most heinous of crimes repent and begin to cultivate their own hearts of original goodness which emulates God's great heart.

Maybe the best poignant image of the tender Creator is the one painted by Jesus in his story of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15.11-32).  The patriarch's aching heart is revealed for his wayward son's return when he stays waiting at the window hoping for the day he returned.  The father forgets everything when he first sights his son walk back to the land and runs forward to greet him. He is beside himself with joy to have his son back, no matter what pain the young man caused. One could say the father is a willing slave to parental love.
 

Since man is made in God's image, God's heart is essentially the same. 

God has fashioned Himself to be vulnerable to His children and to be captive the the same love that captivates them.

“He is the Lord omnipotent, the Lord of all beings, the controller of all,” the Hindu scripture reads, “yet he permits himself to be controlled by those who love him” (Srimad Bhagavatam)—and by love itself.

Because of His unfailing faith in His people and His vision, God can endure the agony of seeing His faithful ones scorned and persecuted and to keep on working until every part of the original plan is realized.  This means, God will not cease His work of restoring His children and world until everyone is back into His bosom.

“He will not falter or be discouraged,” the prophet Isaiah declared, “till he establishes justice on earth” (42.4).

With the heart of the Father yet in the shoes of a servant, God perseveres to save His children, driven by His heart of hope.  The father who pays for his son’s careless damage to another person’s car, the mother who goes to the principal to ask for one more chance for her daughter, the father who stands with his boy in court and offers his own respectability as a hope for leniency, the mother who apologizes to a child her daughter has shared the sorrow of God over the misbehavior of His children.

All share the same hope: if they pay enough, pray enough, love enough, and try hard enough, eventually their children will respond to their sacrifice and love and will become responsible people in their own right. This is the hope of every parent. God, the Parent of all, is the same.

Photos by: freedigitalphotos.net
 

Return for Tomorrow's Post: How to Grow the Heart

 

Textbook: Educating For True Love Chapter, Foundation of Character Foundation based on the teachings of Dr. Rev. Sun Myung Moon as more of an understanding of the Heart of God.