Fellow Sojourner

For years I’ve preached the fact that I do not believe in a separation of what many call the sacred and the secular. I believe such a division is made merely as a human reaction, and somehow flawed attempt, to describe the world as God might see it. However, reality is, God sees the world very differently than we do. As a matter of fact, He sees everything much differently than we do. In Isaiah 55 God declares that “His ways are not our ways and His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.” When we come to a full realization of what those words mean, then maybe we’ll stop trying to categorize a world where God sees only His creation.

Is everything perfect on this earth? Of course not. But, that does not change how God feels about and sees His creation. We must remember He is the Beginning and the End. That means He sees the world from the end of the story to where we find ourselves in this journey now.

When Thomas Merton transitioned from the monastery to living as a hermit one of his first journal entries pointed to this very same separation I’m addressing here now. On September 11, 1965 Merton writes; “Here, (in the hermitage), I see my task is to get rid of the last vestiges of a Pharisaical division between the sacred and the secular, to see that the whole world is reconciled to God in Christ.”

A Fellow Sojourner,
Dr. Rus

Tags: Thomas Merton