Celebrating God’s Day, 2016!

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Today we celebrate God’s Day, or more recently named Heavenly Parent’s Day. I think one of the most important things Rev. Moon did in his lifetime was to establish a day when we celebrate God and God’s ideal. The world is full of all sorts of random holidays. This month alone there are more than 30 such days including: Hoodie Doo Day, Lame Duck Day, National Battery Day and National Weatherman Day (they probably need their own day!)

With so much going on it’s easy to forget about God. Some people say that God is irrelevant to modern life but that is not the case.

For example, everyone is looking for love and peace in their lives. I haven’t met a single person who doesn’t aspire to this. Nevertheless, love and peace evade us. Why is this?

There are so many peace initiatives in the world and every one of them, no matter how small, are all worthwhile. But still something is missing. It’s like a critical piece of the puzzle is not there and because of that the picture is incomplete. Rev. Moon has suggested that missing piece is God. Without our Heavenly Parent, real and lasting peace is compromised. That is an interesting claim. How so?

Peace Starts with God’s Love

Trying to build peace without all the pieces is a work in futility. For true peace to come about there has to be love. You can’t live in peace with people that you don’t love. Without love you will always manage to find fault, find things to complain out, be resentful about or be fearful of. That’s a story we all know well.

Ultimately, to create peace we have to find God’s love. But the question is where is that love? Rev. Moon had an answer to this dilemma:

“Where can we dig to find God’s love?  God’s love does not originate where brothers and sisters love each other.  (It’s not that it is not present in brotherly love – it doesn’t originate there.) God’s love does not originate with man and woman’s love at the center. God’s love originates in the love between parent and child. There has to be a vertical relationship.  Such a relationship is established only through parents’ love, so the parent-child relationship is the foundation for love.  In this love there is no distance.”  

For those of us with children, we can easily understand this concept.

If you think of your child there is no distance, nothing you wouldn’t give to be in relationship with them. When you are, you feel complete. When you are not, you struggle. There is no greater suffering. It’s as if a part of you is separated from yourself.

God is Our Heavenly Parent    

Everyone respects a saint. A saint embodies the ethic of “living for the sake of others.” Nevertheless, no matter how great their faith, they can never achieve the closeness in the realm of heart that a son or daughter enjoys. This is why our faith tradition is so beautiful to me. Our highest value is in the relationship between God and humanity, as parent and child.

Family Lying Upside Down On Sofa With DaughterThe importance of this unique relationship is the presence of greater freedom, based on love, in the relationship of parent and child. No other relationship offers this same level of freedom. A true child can disagree with or even astound their parent with something new. This relationship allows for a breadth and depth like no other. Imagine, we have this with God if we so desire!

Father Moon’s greatest teaching is that God doesn’t just want workers (saints and patriots) or loyal subjects for the Kingdom, but true sons and daughters whose pure hearts shine like the sun, reflecting His nature.

Holy sons and daughters are greater than a saint because they know God as their Heavenly Parent. They honor God because they come from Him. Like the vast Universe, they know their greatness is a testimony to their roots.

Honoring your roots

I saw this expressed recently in a picture of Miss Thailand bowing to her mother. Although she is considered the most beautiful young woman in her country she knows she is so because of her origin or roots. Her humble parents are the source of her greatness. Holy sons and daughters cannot forget their roots.Honoring Parent's

It is for this reason that we want to honor our Heavenly Parent through the celebration of God’s Day. We want to bow down in the same way to honor our God who created the Universe and gave birth to each one of us. Our greatness comes from Him and the beauty of the harmonious, natural world around us comes from Him. We want to honor our God.

We need God but God also needs us

One of the uniqueness’s of Rev. Moon theology is the understanding that God needs us as much as we need God! That is such a revolutionary idea. But it comes from the understanding that nothing, not even God, lives for itself or by itself. This is a beautiful understanding within the Divine Principle. In a sermon on the meaning of God’s Day, which we celebrate on the first day of the lunar calendar each year, Rev. Moon said:

God alone cannot fulfill His dispensation; He needs a partner. He needs human beings. This is why God’s Day has been declared – it is one day in which God can rejoice over His own victory. We have set aside this day for celebrating God’s victory. What causes God to rejoice the most? What God likes the most is to fulfill His ideal and His will. The fulfillment of that ideal is the fulfillment of His purpose of creation. What is that purpose of creation? It is the consummation of true love. That is the essence of the purpose of creation. Think about all the people in the world that want to know the answer to that question.

Love cannot be fulfilled by anyone alone, not even by God Himself alone. Even though God is almighty, can you imagine Him dancing around all by Himself, saying, “I’m totally in love with myself!” He would be a crazy God, wouldn’t He?

When God’s true love is consummated, we call that the fulfillment of the heavenly four position foundation. This is an absolutely clear sequence. The heavenly four positions are the love of God, love between husband and wife, and then love of children and parents. Thus the Unification Church celebrates four major holidays each year: Parents’ Day, Children’s Day, Day of All Things (celebrating the natural world), and God’s Day. We are heading toward the perfection of all people, all things, and the perfection of the joy of God.”

This is an incredible ideal but for it to become real we have to substantialize it in our lives. The profound meaning of God’s Day can’t just be a diagram in a book. It has to start in the parent child relationship and with our relationship with our Heavenly Parent. We need to learn to trust God.

Can we trust God?

There are three common reasons why people don’t trust God. Maybe you have struggled with one or more of these reasons yourself. I know I have.

  1. Conflict with the things we were taught about God
  2. Not understanding the nature of God
  3. Not having a personal relationship with God

The world around us subscribes many things to God that simply are not true. This then becomes our rationalization for not trusting God. We don’t like what this or that church or religion says, so we discount God completely. That is not fair!

peace, family, natureThe Divine Principle is liberating in this sense because it says that you can come to know to God by observing the natural world around you. The created world reflects its Creator and from it, if you look closely, you can learn many things. Trusting God becomes a natural outcome of your experience and the things you’ve learned from personal discovery of the nature of God.

What have you learned from your own personal discovery of who God is? That is precious knowledge.

Learning to trust God comes from building a relationship with God, not based on the intellect but grounded in an evolutionary process within yourself whereby you grow your consciousness of the presence of God in your life. It’s a spiritual experience rather than an intellectual dialogue or a religious act. It comes from recognizing there is a spirit within us that is connected to God. Rev. Moon used to talk about a silver thread between you and God that can’t be broken, no matter what.

What connects us to God is internal and eternal. You can never sever the parent- child bond. God is incapable of saying, “I never knew you,” no matter what you have done. That is amazing love.

Iyanla Vanzant wrote:

“Understanding the nature of God as good and the presence of God as internal are key elements in developing trust, both within you and of God. Recognizing that God is not an external force (hell bent on retribution of seismic proportions) means rethinking or perhaps unlearning all that you have been taught about God. God breathes life into us. The essence of who we are is God and is of God. When we know, believe and understand we are individual expressions of God, trusting ourselves and trusting God is the same. There is no separation.

We have to make this real in our lives. I wanted to know where I could find examples of this.

Sadly, we are not very good at thinking about God or thanking Him. I found a curious study on-line. Vocativ mined through 1,396 acceptance speeches currently archived on Academy’s website to measure who got the most “Thank Yous” from Oscar winners.

Spielberg came in at number one, with 42 mentions, followed by Harvey Weinstein, James Cameron, George Lucas, and Peter Jackson. All names we are familiar with. God came in at number six, with just 19 mentions. We too easily forget God and the roots of our talents.

Someone to look up to; someone to look forward to and someone to chase

One Academy speech stood out form all the rest. It was given in 2014 by Matthew McConaughey for his role in Dallas Buyers Club.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD2cVhC-63I

He gave a beautiful message, noting that you always need someone to look up to. He shared with the audience that he looked up to God in his life. McConaughey said:

First off, I want to thank God, because that’s who I look up to. He’s graced my life with opportunities that I know are not of my hand or any other human hand.”

McConaughey OscarHe went on to say that you also need someone to look forward to; to him that is coming home to his family; being the son, husband and father his family can trust and respect. Family brings joy and meaning. Finally, he said that you need someone to chase. When he was 15 he was asked by a friend who his hero was. After thinking about it he decided that it was himself, in 10 years. When he became 25, his friend asked him if he had become the hero he chased and Matt replied, hell no! He then committed to chasing his 35 year old self. We should be constantly chasing the ideal in our lives.

It’s amazing that McConaughy had the confidence to stand up in Hollywood and make such a speech. He could express that because he trusts himself and he trusts God in his life. He has confidence to become his own hero because he recognizes God’s spirit is within him. He doesn’t need to pursue some other hero. He’s not saying “I’m the greatest.” He is simply acknowledging the Divine potential within himself. That is true confidence and the right kind of confidence. God needs each and every one of us to have the confidence to pursue the hero or heroine within. `

We can take a lesson from Matthew McConaughy and Miss Thailand and honor our Heavenly Parent and thank God for everything we are and everything we aspire to be. We know God is at the root of all our potential and great achievements. We want to offer everything back to Him by celebrating God’s Day.

What would make God happy on this special day? Only one thing: the emergence of true sons and daughters in whom He can freely dwell -people who recognize God within themselves and with whom He can live happily and be proud of. God wants to respect us! Up until now, God could not settle anywhere on the face of the earth. Before there can be peace in the world, we first need to secure our relationship with God because it’s only through that relationship that we can become people capable of creating peace.

Now we know what we can do to celebrate God’s Day! I hope you have a very Happy God’s Day and bring great joy to our Heavenly Parent!

 

 

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