St. Augustine once said, “My heart is restless until it rests in God.”
I was raised by my parents in the Catholic teachings. I was exposed to different spiritual and Christian literatures from Elementary to College. When I started working and earned my living, I began to question the existence of God especially when rough times came my way. Many years ago, I asked God that He would show up to me and prove He really exists. I wasn’t expecting a supernatural sight of a Diving Being. I just wanted to hear His Voice and get to know Him and maybe know what He wanted me to do in this world. It didn’t happen. But I continued my search. I came across books where the author claimed he experienced conversations with God as he was undergoing automatic writing. I was so drawn by his book that I had to read the whole trilogy. I intensely desired to experience exactly the same until one afternoon, something metaphysical occurred.
While I was driving from work to home on a sunny afternoon, I suddenly heard a Voice telling me, “God ahead and write this down. You are one of the many I have talked to. Now it’s your time…” Goosebumps were all over my body. Fear, confusion, wonder, awe and anything in between engulfed my mind and emotion. I tried to shrug the Voice away thinking it was just me making up the voice. But the Voice repeated the same words again and again until I had to do what it said. At that moment, never did it occur to me about what I read. Never did it come across my mind that it could be the fulfillment what I desired. What I mean, the Voice just happened. It just hit me that I didn’t want to believe it was happening. And so, when I got home, I took a ballpen and a sheet of paper and there it started my own version with conversations with God.
Years passed after the purported conversations with God, I said to my myself, “Naah… It was just my own imagination. It was just my subconscious that surfaced expressing and letting all out what I read and what I wanted to duplicate.” The more I confirmed that it was just the making of my fantasy when I repeatedly fell and committed different kinds of sins. I told myself, “How could God be talking to me when I’m just like anyone else? I’m no saint. I’m no holy person. I’m a sinner. I’m not worthy. How could He be giving me messages and choose me to be His messenger when He could have chosen someone who’s upright and morally good?!
However, why am I so restless? I can’t firmly decide whether there is really a God or not. I’m somehow influenced by the sensible words of an atheist, Stephen Hawking. On the other hand, the words of St. Augustine, My heart is restless until it rests in God, still haunts me, telling me persistently I can never rest if I don’t go back and do what the Voice told me that one afternoon.
Mike m. luster 