God is evident in our everyday lives

Faith is a way of seeing things. When we choose faith, to believe, we are also choosing to denounce evil and sinful ways. To have faith and embrace faith, we have to believe in love and also to practice love, for love is the binding of our faith. To make a permanent commitment in love, in particular, is to grow up in a very important way. When we are grounded in faith, we are strong and have inner peace. When we do not reach inner stillness we are forever restless.

Living a life a faith means living a life of blessing. Being faithful means giving and receiving blessings. “To be blessed is to be oneself a blessing,” says Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

Being faithful and living in faith also means to be joyful. If not, when joy breaks down, eventually everything breaks down. When we bless someone we speak well of him or of her. If we are unblessed we suffer very deeply. Blessings deconstricts the heart and blessing begets blessing.

To live a life without faith is to live in loneliness. We may have human contact but our inner selves and beings still yearns for more. There are five basic kinds of human loneliness. They are alienation, restlessness, rootlessness, psychological depression and moral loneliness. Our deepest aloness is moral. When we listen to our own loneliness we connect with ourselves. Our hearts, minds, and bodies are restless until they rest in God. It is important that we surround ourselves with people who will not drain our inner spirits. We should not travel with people who expects us to be exciting all the time.

Living in faith helps us to identify situations which can affect and break our lives. One popular aspect of our lives that needs to be policed is our sexual life. Sex if not done under the right circumstances does more harm than good to our lives. There are three kinds of sex, each with three effects. Abusive sex destroys our soul. Casual sex trivializes our soul, and sacramental sex, the one we should participate in, builds up the soul.

Nothing that is truly great is achieved easily, and that goes for faith as well. To have great faith take dedication and perseverance, and so does love. Great love, like great art, takes great effort, sustained commitment, and lots of time.

“Our doing brings success, but our being bears fruit,” says the great Henri Nouwen.

Life is nature and nature is life. They are there to inspire us for us to use our imagination. A healthy imagination is the opposite of resignation, abdication, naive optimism, or despair.