“ I came that they may have life and may have it abundantly.
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This life, this eternal life, consists for man in absolute oneness with God and all divine modes of being, oneness with every phase of right and harmony. It consists in a love as deep as it is universal, as conscious as it is unspeakable; a love that can no more be reasoned about than life itself. What then is our practical relation to the life original? What have we to do towards the attaining to the resurrection from the dead? If we did not make ourselves, how can we, now we are made, do anything at the unknown roots of our being? What relation of conscious unity can be betwixt the self-existent God, and beings who live at the will of another?
For the link in our being to close the circle of immortal oneness with the Father, we must search the deepest of man’s nature: there only can it be found. And there we do find it. For the will is the deepest, the strongest, the divinest thing in man; so, I presume, is it in God, for such we find it in Jesus Christ. Here, and here only, in the relation of God’s will and his own, can a man come into vital contact with the All-in-all. When a man can and does entirely say, “Not my will, but thine be done”—when he so wills the will of God as to do it, then is he one with God, one, as a true son with a true father, and an heir of all he possesses. By the obedience of a son, he receives into himself the very life of the Father. Will is God’s will, obedience is man’s will; the two make one. By willed obedience we may share in the bliss of God’s essential self-ordained being.
Commentary
by Dale Darling
Thy will be done on earth, in me, as it is in heaven.
In heaven is all Life, all light: righteousness, love, grace, truth. Thy will, O Lord, says the obedient; come to Me all ye that are heavy laden: I will give you peace, life abundant. Never again will you thirst, for in Me is Life without beginning or ending. I am the All in all. Trust Me as a child, as My very own son. Release thy grip on self, and by obedience open thy being to Me.
Reverential trust and the hatred of evil are the beginning of wisdom.
By willed obedience we may share in the bliss of God, drink of living water: know as we are now known, and live in the eternal present.