Yet I believe God's Unsleeping Eye beholds all things, down to the very marrow of our souls. What does God make of us? How does God judge us? What lies ahead of us when we die? I know God does not neglect any of us.
And, if nothing is neglected by God, if God's Unsleeping Eye sees all things, then God sees and cares beyond all human boundaries. God is the God of All.
So - for all humanity, for all sinners, what will become of all of us?
Is God Someone you know of, or know? Do you think of the God of All, or only think of the God of the Jews, or the God of Episcopalians, or Evangelicals, or Catholics, or Baptists, or Orthodox?
God created all. Will God neglect any, then? Will God have only one religious path that leads to salvation for all us sinners?
Jesus spoke of one Great Commandment: to love God with your whole heart, whole soul, whole mind, and whole strength, and to love your neighbor as yourself. To believe in God is one thing. To give evidence of God in one's life is another, and Jesus measures our belief by our capacity for love.
Love for God, neighbor, self, is the one religious path that leads to salvation for all sinners. Feeding the hungry. Clothing the naked. Visiting and healing the sick. Comforting the sorrowful. Burying the dead. St. John says it beautifully: "We have come to know and believe in the love God has for us. God is Love, and whoever remains in love remains in God and God in him." (1 John 4:16)
God is Love. What powerful, mysterious, majestic words! Not only God's Sight reaches into the very marrow of our souls, but God's Love for us. And what is Love? Love is the Reality of the Blessed Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, a Community of Persons Whose very essence is Loving-Kindness.
God is Love, Which encompasses all the virtues. God - Love - is patience, kindness, gentleness, endurance, forgiveness, courage, peace, joy. God - Love - expands the Universe rather than contracts it. God - Love - gives unstintingly. God - Love - allows the Beloved, us, to totally be ourselves perfectly.
Then - if we live in God, Love, and God lives in us - are we allowing God to expand our own internal universe beyond the confines of the groups we belong to, our religion, our culture, our race, our ethnicity, our country? Are we searching for, and accepting the Truth of Love, wherever such Truth is to be found? Are we accepting that sin, in reality, is locking ourselves within an ever-contracting universe of what and who is safe and known?
When we know that God neglects all and God sees all, we can begin to listen more closely to words outside the confines of the known. The Buddhist, Thich Nhat Hanh says "Through the practice of deep looking and deep listening, we become free, able to see the beauty and values in our own and others' traditions."
Without leaving our own identities behind of Catholic, Jew, Evangelical, Baptist, we can accept that God speaks to every human heart and leaves part of His Truth and Love within for each to savor and to share. It is good to know our differences. It is even more important to rejoice in the ways we reflect the same Face of God. And Love - God - is the Key.
Has not every good person in this world sinned? Has not every good person sought God -as he or she understands God - and that God's forgiveness? In experiencing God's forgiveness, has not he or she experienced God as Love?
Rumi, the Sufi mystic from the Moslem tradition, rejoices that the mystical prayer traditions of the three great Abrahamic faiths all understand that God is Love, that we're called to be in Love with God. That Love, God, seeks unity in all things. Rumi says
For those in love,
Moslem, Christian, and Jew do not exist...
Why listen to those who see it another way? -
if they're not in love - their eyes do not exist.
From Hinduism, we hear "Many are the paths of humans, but they all, in the end, come to Me."
Christians believe and unendingly seek to understand the enormous Mystery that Jesus Christ, true God and true Man, died once, for all. St. Basil tells us "There is nothing unpremeditated, nothing neglected, by God. His Unsleeping Eye beholds all things." In what lies salvation, then? Must one know the theology of Who Jesus is to be saved, or is it enough to accept and live the essence of Who Jesus is, which is Love? If God is love, and he who lives in love lives in God, and God lives in him or her, - is living in love enough, then?
Will God be patient with the Hindu, or Moslem, or Buddhist who does not know or understand the Fullness of Revelation, Jesus Christ, but who lives a life of sacrificial love? Will God, Whose Unsleeping Eye beholds all, recognize God's Image of Love within that soul? Will God then welcome that non-Christian but loving soul to heaven, and then reveal the full, glorious Truth of Jesus Christ to him or her?
God- Love - is a Mysterious Abyss of Mercy. Pope Francis tells us that God is Mercy above all else. I wait upon His Merciful, Forgiving, and Patient Love.