We are Hungry...

"Prayer is the encounter of God's thirst with ours."

I am hungry! A lot of people probably hear that a lot from me...hee hee..i like to eat, what can I say! I like food and good food at that. I found that in my experience a good meal can carry you and give you the energy you need to get there. How is this any different with our encounter with God? How is that different then when our Lord invites us to share in his banquet meal of the Eucharist? It is not different at all. That meal provides strength for the journey in a way that nothing else can. This food is his life given over to us so that we may become him to others in this world.
My spiritual journey did not just begin with a notion of God, but a hunger in my soul that this world could not feed me.
In fact my journey began with me about to leave my faith and pursue the world and all its glamour! I remember just being done with believing in something that I could not see and really something that I felt forced to believe. All I wanted to do was just bask in what all my friends were doing. God had other plans for me and brought into my life a person that gave me Christ himself. As I fed off of the life of Christ, nothing else was good enough anymore. I began to be fed and my life changed. My whole world changed. I wanted to serve God alone. As scripture has so beautifully put it, sometimes all we need to love is merely the to eat the scraps at the banquet table. One touch of his love and nothing else can satisfy.
I am still hungry. I am hungry for more and more or that Love! That is the gift, that His love keeps you coming back for more and always provides enough. Where do I go and what do i do to get more? Well I think that has been the biggest challenge for me in my life today. I have a prayer life and a relationship with God that is beyond my wildest dreams and yet I find that when it comes to sharing that with others around me, I am at a loss. Why you may ask? Because even though I find people to hang out with and share with, it is hard to find people who are right there with you, who, as I like to put it, "GET IT!"
It is very annoying when you meet a billion people a day and feel like the odd man out. The funny thing is i know that in my heart it does not have to be that way. That God longs for us to live in community with one another. That as he sent his apostles out two by two because he longs for us to be able to share our experiences with each other. This sharing not only confirms our faith, but provides strength for the journey as we move forward.

I feel like alot of people I have met seem to be putting a stopper on there spiritual progress. Like all of a sudden they are like ummm...no I don't know what you are talking about and honestly i'm not too interested in knowing. Or wherever they have made progress to, well they feel happy just staying there and not moving anymore. As I thought about it more today I realized that there is fear in both of those statement. Fear of knowing who we are in light of Christ and fear of what God may call us to if we give him everything. Fear of what God may show us and what God may call us to stop doing so as to draw closer to him.

So in a lot of ways when we stop our growth, we tell God to stop moving in our lives. Well that is some self-will for ya! Yeesh...it all comes down to a fear of suffering! Its gonna hurt! If I give my life over to God and surrender, it will hurt. If I let God show me who I really am, it will hurt. If I stop doing the things that I love that keep me away from him, its gonna hurt. I don't want to suffer and so I don't want to progress. I remain hungry, and begin to feed off whatever I can get my hands on. This is the life that I see so many people falling into today! We compromise because of our hunger for true love. A love that only one can give. A love that when experienced just once can fill you more deeply and fully then we can ever imagine. How do we receive that Love? We need only ask for it. God will reveal himself to you in any and every way possible! As our Lord said on the Cross "I thirst." What does he thirst for, souls! He longs for you to long for Him.