Loved, Just As We Are

Sister Ruth Burrows

"It is the nagging sense that we are never spiritual enough which reveals our lack of trust in God.  As we chase the spiritual life like a carrot at the end of a stick we never get to truly rest in God’s present love for us. [I have friends who] knew they were loved by God and yet there was an indefinable anxiety which inhibited their total surrender to that love.  I saw these dear people, self-giving, generous, full of love for God and yet still anxious, still hesitant before the last step which would release them from themselves and open them to God’s love.

“I long to convince them that, here and now, in their present ‘unsatisfactory’ state, in their so-called ‘failure’, God desires to give himself to them; that this state of poverty is precisely what he wants and that it represents his way into them. He has labored with love for a long time to open up this way for them.  Will they now block it?  If they do, they are turning from the straight path of poverty, and choosing instead the winding road of spiritual riches."

Before the Living God