How to observe God’s love.

The danger of just taking a simple statement and saying that God is all-powerful can serve to remove the responsibilities and opportunities that are available to you. One could simply say God is all-powerful. If I pray to God that something is resolved, something is mitigated, something is overcome, then there is nothing more to be done than to wait patiently for God to act. That relationship to God is a passive one, but your connection to God must always be positive.

In short, if you pray to God to bring peace, then do what you can to bring about peace. If you pray that God is somehow healing another who is suffering, do what you can to mitigate that suffering. It is all about intention. If you wish to observe God’s love, you must have the intention of being loving and of being open, of being vulnerable, so that the love that is offered by others will be fully received by you.

Being active as the presence of God does not imply you must be out speaking with others, working with others, supporting others in very concrete ways. Certainly, those are ways but not the only way. Praying for the benefit of another is being active. Real prayer is not a passive activity. It is an activity of commitment, of doing, of being, of representing what it is you seek. It’s being committed to a process. Praying is not just leaving it to God, brushing off the dirt from your hands, and going on just thinking “when God wants to act, God will act.” It is acting as is most appropriate for you.