Contemplating on God

As Christians, we believe that we're completely dependent upon God. Ordinary life tends to cover this up though. The details of daily living cause us if anything, to depend on ourselves, not God. My good friend in Albuquerque mentioned to me recently the importance to him of a contemplative life. By that I assumed he meant the importance of contemplation upon God rather than just using my imagination or my brain as I go through life and reflect on God. Mmmm, contemplating God, being dependent, thankful, etc. vs. using brains? In other words, contemplation probably means this: A sense of gratitude and dependence... which is the whole point. It's reality. I have so much to be grateful for. Do I recognize it? GK Chesterton said, "He who has seen the whole world hanging on a hair of the mercy of God has seen the truth." And, "He who has seen the vision of his city upside-down has seen it the right way up." This is more than just thinking about God and his plan.

Rossetti makes the remark somewhere, bitterly but with great truth, that "the worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank. The converse of this proposition is also true; and it is certain that this gratitude produced, in such men as we are here considering, the most purely joyful moments that have been known to man." Now that's a paradox.

GK Chesterton also said in his biography of St. Francis of Assisi, "The great painter boasted that he mixed all his colors with brains, and the great saint may be said to mix all his thoughts with thanks. All goods look better when they look like gifts. In this sense it is certain that the mystical method establishes a very healthy external relation to everything else. But it must always be remembered that everything else has for ever fallen into a second place, in comparison with this simple fact of dependence on the divine reality."

I think what Chesterton is saying is, it's a discovery of an infinite debt. In fact, it may be said that we are transported to joy at the discovery of how great our debt really is. Contemplate on this! We're grateful to God for the forgiveness of our debt and dependent upon him for everything because we cannot begin to erase the debt. "Debt and dependence" says Chesterton become the pleasures of unspoiled love. Why be gloomy, there is so much to be happy about.