The Vulture On A Limb

When I was a kid, I went to a Catholic school and all of the teachers were nuns. This was the early 1950’s and they still wore the habits and looked very strange indeed. I had these ladies from first through eighth grade and was then handed over to Benedictine priests for the four years of high school. There were a few civilian teachers in high school, three or four, but all the rest were priests. Along with all of the regular subjects, we had extensive training in our Catholic faith. We learned a lot about God, the Trinity, the history of the Catholic Church, the history of the saints of the church, and, of course, how all of this was going to fit into our lives someday. What we didn’t learn about was love, God’s love for us.

We learned about sin, of course. We learned about it and about asking God to forgive us when we sinned. We were given some practical examples of what sin was so that we could recognize it and avoid it, and avoid the punishment that came with it. One of the humorous examples was a nun who said if I kissed a girl for more than 60 seconds, it was a serious sin and if I then died unconfessed, God would send me straight to Hell. I was always thankful that I didn’t die back then because I did some serious kissing on some of my dates.

The sad bottom line was that they taught us about a punishing, vengeful God. I do not remember any emphasis on a loving God, a God who loved us and wanted us to have the best because he designed us that way. It was always a matter of God’s wrath and how it was going to result in us going to Hell for a wide variety of sins. There was no mention of a God who loves me. It remained that way for many years.

In the early 1990’s I went to a weekend retreat that changed everything I knew about God. There were three presenters: two Jesuit priests, who were also brothers, and a lady with a Master’s degree in Theology. For the first time in the almost 50 years I had been living, I heard that God loved me. Even though I had heard John 3:16 many times during my life, I didn’t really listen to it or absorb what it meant. One of the priests used this example of just how much we are loved by God: he said that if we were on the fence about whether we wanted to follow God or turn our backs on him, he would spend an eternity of love in an instant to show us just how much he loved us and wanted us to spend eternity with him. My reaction to that was very simple: utter shock. This was a view of God that I had never seen or heard up until then. God loves me? Really? And he wasn’t just waiting there, like the vulture on a limb, waiting to send me to Hell? That was a life-changing moment. The other part of the message was that God doesn’t send us to hell; we choose to go there by rejecting him. What an awesome truth.

In the twenty-some years that have followed, I have carried that image of God in my heart. I now see the reality of the sacrifice that Jesus made for us by going through his torture and death on the cross. This was all an act of true love, true and unselfish and limitless.

Where are you in your relationship with God? Do you relate to the ultimate mystery, the Three Persons in the Trinity, the Father, the Son, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit? Have you looked into your heart, soul and mind and seen the fullness of God’s love for you and have you returned it in like kind? Is God real to you, or just something that you hear about on Sunday mornings and maybe Wednesday nights? Have you let him into your life or is he just an occasional visitor?
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God is very real. He loves you with a love beyond comprehension. He loves you even if you think you don’t deserve it. Open yourself to that love and know the true joy of God’s presence in your life.