Revelation 5: Vision
Question:
What does God especially cherish about you?
Write your Answer – click here
Transcript of Video:
John has this vision where he sees the hand of God in the whole of creation in ordinary things like bread and wine and water. He sees God’s very self breaking through. And I think John’s gospel I think helps to give us a similar vision so that we, too, when we walk in the world John’s gospel can sort of open our eyes to see that in Gerard Manley Hopkins’ words, “That the world is charged with the grandeur of God.” And I think it’s that which draws me to John that every time I read John I have a – it’s almost like my own vision is deepened. And it’s extraordinary, The more one goes deeper into the words of John in a remarkable way I think the more one enters into the very heart of God and discovers again and again just how much God loves and cherishes each one of us.
– Br. Geoffrey Tristram
The degree of joy and gratitude I feel when singing praises to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, coupled with our lifetime of conversations in prayers, silences, listening, and returning to relationship with one another… these may be cherished by God, as they are by me.
I’m struck by how many people have the same answer I came to: That I try. Those were the words that came to me, and when I came to finally post my answer (a week late, but, hey! I’m trying! 🙂 ) I was really surprised at how many times those words were echoed. It struck me as deeply beautiful.
The warmth of God’s cherishing fills me, when through
Centering Prayer, I become willing to simply open myself
to share in the Divine energy of God’s Love. In the stillness,
one is known beyond all knowing, parts once disparate are
becoming whole, and I am being set free to be fully me ~ all
by the grace of God. “What wondrous love is this!”
I suppose he cherishes me for who I am. Who knows me better then God. I know my family loves me unconditionally. I can only imagine how wonderful it would be to hear his voice. Wow, only God knows
what is in my heart and soul.
For me, I take comfort in the belief that God cherishes that in me which I would prefer not to cherish in myself. But I also believe God cherishes that which I DO choose to cherish in myself. So it seems, God cherishes everything about me. But it puts a bit of pressure on me. Not only do I feel compelled to be the person my DOG thinks I am, but I must also be the person my GOD thinks I am.
An addition : I think God cherishes my ministry to the poor.
My wife says He also cherishes the light and love I can show.
I have to agree with all of you. It is difficult to think about how God cherishes me, but I know He does. I have to fall back on my faith because in His Word he says we are fearfully and wonderfully made. He created each one of us and died for all. He certainly cherishes me and each one of us. The mystery lies in what that is, but I have a heart that chases after Him.
I’ve been struggling with this question since reading it two days ago. I believe God DOES cherish me. He has sent people into my life who have helped and taught and nurtured when I desperately needed someone to care and stand with me, and several of those people have chosen to let me be there for them in their need too. God is in that. But what does God cherish about me, personally? Maybe that I’m still breathing, still praying, still loving him and the people I encounter, even though a lot of harm that had been done to me could have left me hard and bitter. Love matters more than anything. God probably cherishes the fact I’ve been willing to learn and embrace that concept.
I think God most cherishes the free will ability we have to reach up for Him through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ
I believe God cherishes me because I am part of his creation and he has unconditional love for all of us. I believe the good in each one of us is ultimately cherished – the God in us.
I think what God most cherishes about me is that I cherish God and when I forget that cherishing, she/he cherishes me anyway. When I manage to wipe away someone’s tear, or feed a hungry person or do any of those things that God put me here to do, then I think that cherishing turns to delight!
This is difficult for me to contemplate.. I’ve been challenge by this before – to go beyond the comparatively comfortable concept of God’s love encompassing all that is, to stop and exprience God’s particular love for me. I squirm as the wounds and other things about myself that I am uncomfortable with are actually all revealed, comrpehended within His Omniscient gaze, and loved. This is personal. I quiver at the immediacy and honesty of such intimacy, and if it were not also so gentle, could not even bear it.
Perhaps I am most amazed that God cherishes my idiosyncratic imagination. Sheesh!
What does God cherish in me? probably my quirky sense of humour and my unfailing ability to blunder …
I feel that God expects me to find joy in being a blessing to those who travel this life with me. To care about the welfare of my family, my friends and those that He puts on my path.
I believe that God cherishes my individuality, my uniqueness. Yes, I do possess character traits from my parents and my appearance due to my genetic make-up, but I have also been formed by my experiences. Not only have these experience helped me to be the unique image of God but people have also helped form me. From my family and friends, to mentors and teachers, and of course even strangers have all contributed. I think that God values my individuality and cherishes the variety of human expression that exists within each of us. Thank you to all who have walked with me along the way.
I found this question difficult to answer, and it helped me to read people’s responses. This week I struggled with receiving an anonymous, and very personal, critique from a student. Intellectually, I know not to take it seriously – but sometimes those words seem to cut through the sweet, brittle shell I like to wear and expose me for being a fake and a fraud. But perhaps God loves me, as another writer said, for hanging in there.
Tteaching makes us very vulnerable. Always.
That sounds so hard to bear. I know God especially cherished you in that moment of shock reading what was in that very cowardly gesture. Hugs to you.
What immediately popped into my mind was that God cherishes my failings. Now why that occurred makes me pause: I know God loves it when I am “right on” with him – aware and in love with God and all of His people. Yet I have a niggling feeling that He loves me even more when I struggle and fall short, as I do each and every day. In God’s wisdom, She knows that my desire is to be the best person I can be, and it aches God’s heart and God draws even closer to me when I fail to achieve that goal. God’s love is infinite and unconditional, and the cherishing continues without subsidence, even when I am at my weakest in returning that love through the love of all.
You’re right on, Rev. Judith. Don’t you find yourself cherishing and loving those around you who are imperfect, failing, marred in some way? I used to show only my capable self and had few close friends. When I had the courage to show my weaknessess and failings, I found I was more popular and more loved. Funny thing that.
i think God is with me in my many challages i have had. i pray that i will try and have more patience with john and try to help him all i can. it is a two way street to treat people how you want to be treated. i look to God for the help and guidence i need. i especially like going to the eucharist to pray and ask for the help i need and the guidence, and give thanks for what i have received.
Doggedness.
Another one of those tough God P.O.V. questions! How do I know what God thinks about me! Because God created me (and all beings) and He loves what he creates (because He is love), God cherishes everything about me. But for the sake of answering the question, I’ll pick something and that is Laughter. Laughter is one of our greatest gifts which I cherish – so I believe God cherishes my ability to laugh and see the humor in almost every situation and hopefully bring some lightness into a situation.
After reading all the comments with some nodding and some head shaking and some “aha” moments, I come to Marilyn’s idea of the appreciation God has for those of us gifted with bringing some lightness into situations. I resonate with smiles and laughter. I find many people get heavily intellectualized and serious in their theology – their “God talk” – and JOY gets crushed. This is not exactly the same as playfulness, which we looked at on Tuesday. This is the spirit of Hilaritas. I follow the Associates’ Rule of the Sisters of the Community of the Transfiguration: “Benignitas, Simplicitas, Hilaritas”. God cherishes my spirit of joyfulness.
Same here. I said earlier that God cherished my brokeness. But, He/she? May also cherish my sense of humor and sbility to make people laugh, even in the serious situations. I told my husband once that he could put on my headstone, ” She made them laugh”.
As others have said, the concept of being cherished is a difficult one for me. As a child I was told “I love you but I don’t like you”, and for many years I assumed God felt the same way. Now I hope I am cherished for desiring to be in a closer relationship with God, for using his gifts to help others, for being grateful for all the times he has saved me, for striving to know his will and carry it out; but I still feel unworthy. I desire God’s love to break through the walls surrounding my heart and fill me to overflowing so that I may drench all around me with that same love.
I think God cherishes my child-like heart and my willingness to blindly follow his lead. During this last decade, I have prayed to understand what he wants from me and the strength to accomplish it. I always feel so grateful when it strikes me that I am exactly where he wants me!
I wish I knew. It is easier to for me to understand the truth of God’s love for me and for all of humanity, even if I don’t feel it, which is an important distinction that Br. Almquist shared with us. Love is broader, a word I am used to. Cherish? That has just a slightly different meaning for me. It is more personal. When I looked it up, I saw that it can mean “to keep or cultivate with care and affection”. I find it easier to think about what God might be cultivating in me; for right now it is that I seek Him.
Kim, Thanks so much for sharing the definition. LIght bulb went off. Yes, of course he wants to keep and cultivate the qualities he gave us(!) with much care and affection.
I feel that someone like Mother Teresa is far more worthy of being cherished by God than I am. With that in mind, I believe that God loves and appreciates me for being a loving wife for 48 years, raising four stable and accomplished daughters and having various church and civic responsibilities. Nearly two year ago, my husband was diagnosed with leukemia. After months of chemo and a stem cell transplant last April, he is doing extremely well. Through all of this, my attitude was one of total trust in God that “thy will be done”. That might possibly be semi-cherishable.
At first I thought of the positive ways I try to treat the people I love…my parishioners, my family, my friends. I do think God cherishes that. Then I went a little deeper to some of my traits (good ones of course). Finally I went to the place where God most likely cherishes the things in me that I am not all that fond of…my brokeness, my struggles, my failures, and my short-comings. It shed a whole new light on how often I am so hard on myself because God created me the way I am. Perhaps if God cherishes me in those places, I might lighten up a little to see them as anything from the place where God’s love heals me to simply loving the fact that I am who I am.
In this case, I believe you have found the “truth” that will set us free. Thank you for your profound insight and sharing it with us.
God cherishes my willingness to ask the hard questions of/ in our relationship…..there is n intimacy with God if I cannot say what I am truly thinking or feeling or fearing….things like how come it’s always my fault and never yours God?….do you ever do anything wrong God….if you can repent of the evil you think to do to the Israelites or the Ninivites why cant you do the same with the rest of us….or I feel like you have let me down…I asked for an egg and you gave me or stone…I asked for a fish and I got a scorpion…..or t I have been abandoned and you said you would never leave me or forsake me….well meaning folks suggest I try to find how God has not forsaken me in the barren land where there is no water……..even as I know that God will ask those very same questions of me…where have you been…..why is your love for this less than life giving habit more important than your love for me….I believe love is predicated on taking this risk…..and when all is said and done…my brokenness is the avenue by which God gets a foothold into my soul….
Like so many earlier respondents, I shrink a little from the claim that God cherishes me. When I let myself be open the thought that came to me is that God cherishes my eagerness to please, to please my children, my friends, my fellow deacons and my eagerness to please God. I feel sometimes with embarrassment that there is something childlike about how eager I am to please others.
God cherishes my heart and all that it holds.
Was thrilled by the line from Gerard Manley Hopkins – thank you!
I am cherished for taking advantage of the gift of life; for my personal appreciation of the beauty of nature, my joy in the interaction with loved ones, the application of the blessing of my education and creativity to solving problems.
I know that God cherishes my brain and all the cells that make up my body and all of the energy around me. Within the past year I had the extraordinary experience of having brain surgery. In the first minutes of consciousness after the surgery I was aware – even though I could not speak and had no physical coordination – of God’s Love. I am fully recovered and joyful in awareness of God’s presence always.
I believe cherishes God in the small things ties in with yesterday’s reflection in remember where God is with me. God is present in all things; I just need to remember to appreciate the love and gifts.
I can only hope that God cherishes my humanity and the effort I make to be closer to Him and to trust in Him.
Dwell in God and search for Him throughout the weekend.
Carl
I havn’t a clue as to what in particular God cherishes about me.
But, like Br. Geoffrey, I would like to deepen my vision of God through the words of John, and to fathom more and more just how much God loves and cherishes each of us.
Today’s passage in John is a “hard saying”, for sure! I tried to see it through the love of God (and not just as a tall order), and then I was startled by these words of Jesus: “For this is the will of the Father, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him should have eternal life; and I will raise him up on the last day.”
So God’s love is so pervasive that it can sweep up all of us, myself included, so that we can bathe in that love forever!? And this has already started?
We must be very lovable, indeed!
I believe God cherishes my vulnerability – that part of me which makes me need and rely on God so desperately.
God cherishes me because I am his daughter. I think God loves me no matter what. Two qualities that I imagine He likes are my generosity and cheerfulness.
I think God cherishes all of me, my goodness, my evil, my brokenness, my emotional outburst both good and bad! If he/she is a loving parent, then God cherishes all things about is and as a parent cherishes every minute spent with growing child, so God cherishes us. Different things at different times.
I agree with the person above who said this was a challenging question because we are not accustomed to thinking of ourselves _as_ cherished either individually or in such a personal way. Perhaps individually God most cherishes my willingness to engage with him, whether in struggle and anger, or in gratitude and trust, and to make my faltering efforts to bend my will to his.
I too worry that we can project onto to God what we most treasure about ourselves—but the ability to treasure something about myself, for me, is in reality God’s barely audible whisper of what he treasures in me. And I’m finally hearing it. That is, my willingness to believe that all shall be well, all manners of things shall be well—even when I’m standing in the midst of darkness and uncertainty.
Maria you spoke the words in my heart before I knew them, thank you!!
Thanks Bill, Everyone’s comment before I made mine helped me to clarify, sort thru what this question meant for me. Thanks everyone!
running an inventory of personal characteristics, in response to today’s question, it is difficult to identify anything that, by itself seem worthy to be cherished by God. But I hope that it is my open mind, and unwillingness to adhere rigidly to any human edict or direction, but always to try to hear God’s voice and follow his path for me. I hope it is my non-conformity.
I think God cherishes me just as He does all of us because I am one of His children. Specifically I think God gave me the ability/attitude/desire to respect others, look for the goodness I each person, and help others whenever I can. This has served me well in life and as I grow older I am becoming more aware of how God has blessed me with these abilities and attitudes.
My sense of humour. I live alone except for my wonderful Labrador, who is a great listener but doesn’t really get my jokes. So I am often aware that I’m sharing the joke with the Lord.
For a long time, as I drove down the highway listening to some sappy song on the radio like “Always”, or “Some Enchanted Evening” or even “Wild Horses”, I would imagine it was my soul singing its love for Jesus.
Then, one day, I realized I had it backwards. It was Jesus singing to me.
I like this !
I question that we can anthropomorphize an entity such as god – to ask how we feel god most cherishes us.
Isn’t Jesus Christ the anthropomorphic expression of who God is?
I think God cherishes me because I make use of the gifts that He has given me. For example, I am an organist at a local church and I worship God through this the gift of music. I think He likes this.
I believe God cares that I show up! Great days terrible days I try and be open to God’ Presence and action in my life. Some moments I feel so connected other times like I don’t have a clue. Yet, I show up and try. Amen!
Why does God cherish me? I am not sure. Because I am His child, because I love Him, because He has made me uniquely and cherishes my actions of love towards the world.
It is similar to how I cherish my children and grandchildren. As a parent loves and cherishes the child.
Yes! This question is challenging for me, too. But then I remembered the way my grandmother always greeted me, just by saying my name. But the way she said it, it was dripping with love. She just loved the me-ness of me. Conversely, I was joking with a friend recently that being an empty-nester is more difficult than being the parent of teens “because they really DON’T need you.” If that is hard for me, how hard must it be for God? Perhaps God loves the me-ness of each of us, and cherishes when we remember God’s parent-ness?
I think God cherishes my need to come to Him and ask forgiveness for my sins and then to return tohis Church and do the work of witnessing to His gift of reconcilliation given to all who ask for it.
I think God cherishes my EXPECTATION that he shares every moment of my life, and my JOY in His Presence!
My initial response to this question was…how can I possibly answer this without sounding presumptuous? How could I know what it is about me that He cherished. And realized that that is perhaps what God cherishes most about me, about all of us who believe deeply in his love of us all. He cherishes us for us. Me for me.
God in me and me in God?!
God cherishes in me my ability to keep going even when every day I struggle to keep myself going in spirte of illness. God knows I need to ask for help more than I do, but God likes that I am praying more and more.
God cherishes me. He does?? He does! Sometimes I act like if don’t cherish myself. But I do get up and try again and again, God likes that, way to go, he tells my soul.
We are taught as children that God loves us just because we are His, and because we are made from HIm. He loves us unconditionally and lavishly. I have a hard time feeling worthy of that love many days, but I know He is there, as powerful presence. He doesn’t love me any more or less than anyone else because of what I do or don’t do. Kind of amazing!
Yup, nicely said…unconditional and lavish no matter what we do/are.
I, like Bob above, find this a difficult question to answer.
On deeper reflecton I think God cherishes my love for children, those I work with once a week in the public school and those I teach in Sunday School. I do feel that I am cherished by God as God’s own child.
Not an easy question to wrap my head (heart) around. I have problems with how I am cherished — false humility — but I will pray on this today and perhaps learn to accept that God does cherish me, just as I learned to just say thank you when complimented instead of putting myself down as I had done for years.
The only thing I can think of, other than e created me, is that I keep geting back up & trying again. Slowly, without much grace but I do pull myself together once again & try to get going back on the path. Kind of like what Pamela said.
I’m with Lew on this. How often God has come to my rescue! I can almost hear God saying, “There she goes again,” and reaching out the hand that I know, and sometimes actually feel, is not far from me to set me upright again.
It seems to me that God most cherishes my soul.
i feel almost certainly that God cherishes the introspection i have to look at all parts of my life so that He might intervene and explain, forgive, applaud, or order all of it.
(or maybe that’s a quality that i’m so grateful to have…..this is a difficult question!)
and then maybe it’s my sense of gratitude for (almost) everything in life.
again, this is a tough one.
so the best that i can do is answer the question as i understand it on this Friday, the 14th, 2014!
I think God loves my passion for him. About a dozen years ago and for all the years before that, I felt I lived life in some sort of gray world, although at the time I did not know it. Fear, timidity, shame–all those things were a huge part of my life. When I fell in love with God, I felt set free and developed an incredible passion for him and for sharing him with everyone I could think of.
God cherishes me for being me, this is a never ending task because situations call for me to be smart, charming, kind, forgiving and some days I just want to sit, read, sew . Being present is something to cherish and I do try with God’s help.
I believe (and hope!) that God cherishes me for not being afraid to seek truth, from whatever source. For if it is true, then it is of God.
The things God cherishes about me: my compassion; kindheartedness; empathy; that at 50, I’m still a bit naive; my weirdness, nerdiness; my determination to be myself—I definitely march to a different drum; my writing and poetic outlook on life; my prayers; crocheting. I am loved.
I have always liked Solomen’s understanding heart and I have tried to follow this path in my relation with other. I do not always succeed but God accepts me as I am.
I know there is love and I know I am to consider myself beloved. But cherished? I forget things, I lose things, when I engage it is with intensity, I have been referred to as a tsunami. My students say they appreciate my enthusiasm. The same things that makes some people crazy about me are the things that others say they value. Makes me think of my proposed epitaph….she tried, she died. I have to believe God cherishes me just the way I am, the whole package, warts and all!
Kathryn, welcome to the world! I love you, you are human, you are family.
I think God cherishes and delights in my response to the many times God has come to my rescue.
Like Gina, I think God cherishes my brokenness. Like a parent with a child, I’m sensing that He cherishes me trying, messing up, coming to him for help, and then trying again. And no, I wouldn’t say this is something I cherish, as I would like to not mess up all the time, but I find this revelation to be quite comforting.
I love this insight….just as with our children, what God cherishes in us may not be something we cherish in ourselves. Comfort, indeed.
I think God most cherishes in me my sense of humor, which he shares. That ability to smile while observing the complexity, the irony, the wonderful bizarre quality of life….it’s part of him in me.
Isn’t loving and playfulness child qualities? The thought just struck me that God might be child- like. And if so, maybe that’s why Jesus told us to be as children. To love, to laugh, to trust in him.
Perhaps God loves my admittedly quirky sense of humor. I take God very seriously, but I try not to take myself very seriously.
I think God’s most cherishes our steadfast faith and hope, especially when we are facing challenges and doubts that He is present and loves us.
His Son. Through His redeeming grace, God sees the image of His Son in each of us. We are righteous in the eyes of the Lord through the blood of Jesus. It is Jesus who will judge us and not the Father.
What a tender question! I think God cherishes my willingness to try again. I fall down, lay there for a bit, and then get up. God sees me (trying to) participate with His grace.
Me too. Falling down and getting up pretty well sums up my life.
Likewise. Thanks for articulating the thoughts that were in my mind as I considered the most difficult question yet.
Kathryn, Gina and Pamela–
Thank you so much for your insights. The only truth I can hold on to –the only God I can still believe in even in my worst moments of self-loathing or doubt– is a God who must cherish me in my brokenness, in my willingness to try again, to keep falling down and getting up … because broken is all I can see of who I AM in those moments, and falling and getting up is all I see of what I CAN do at those points. Each time I find myself taking a long look back at my life, This putting my broken self back together, getting up and trying again are the only constants, the only things that are always fueled by good intention and a desire to be faithful to the best I can discern of God’s call to me and, it seems, to each of us. During Lent, especially, I find solace in Jesus’ final journey, which we liturgize as the stations of the cross, because it seems such a clear message that God must cherish us most –with a compassion and mercy of such depth and tenderness that sometimes it takes my breath away– in our most broken … precisely when we fall … indeed when the weight of our countless failures beats us down, crushes us into the ground. …For me, that’s the essence of “freeing the captives” –who are me, you and all of us of any faith or no faith– and that’s a resurrection we can believe in without needing to rest our faith on any other manifestation of it –because we have KNOWN it in the very experience of somehow getting up after each fall and trying again. We have known it in somehow knitting together the myriad shards of our brokenness time and again and somehow, against our abject conviction that we CAN NOT, taking the next step. (St. Exupery says, “What saves a person is to take a step. It’s always the same step, but you have to take it.”) …I was telling a friend last week that I am “a Good Friday Christian” and having a hard time explaining what I meant. You helped me find the words and I thank you so much: For me being it is not a matter of being depressed about the blackness of human nature or the arc of human history, but just the opposite: The torturous journey of the broken Jesus through the Stations is transformed by God’s compassion and love for the Beloved into the Passion of the Christ, and that is, for me, the source of such hope and promise. With a God who so cherishes us in our darkest moments of failure and falling and brokenness, how can we not –all of us, in some way– be on a path through which we will RISE–in life now and life next– to a closer approximation of whatever holiness is God’s intention for us?
I just read the passage from John 5 “everyone who hears my word and believes the one who sent me … has passed from death to life” and I felt the presence of God as the sun rose above the hill in our wooded backyard.
That I am trying to spread His Word to others through my Eucharist ministry.
I long to be able to answer this question easily. I know God loves me and that Jesus died for me but…maybe it’s my tender heart that God loves that I’m such a pile of mush.
I think God especially cherishes my brokeness
My first reaction to the question was to realize how narrow my sense of God’s love is: God cherishes me (just) because he cherishes everyone. I think this question will lead me in very interesting directions, and I give thanks to Brother Geoffrey Tristam for asking it!
I’m with Bob on this one. Maybe God cherishes my willingness to always strive to be more compassionate towards others, to work on being more patient with my own flaws and those of others, and give everyone more room to be who they are rather than who I want them to be.
That I care enough to love and respect Him; and that I care about my fellow souls on this earth.
What a really different question today.
I can think of lots of gifts that God has given me, and lots of ways that God enriches my life, but to flip that around, and ask “what is it of you that God is most proud, and cherishes?” Is very hard.
Maybe this is even more difficult being British, and a good choice of brother to express this question today.
I think God is cherishes my desire to share love, and help others grow, but I’m not actually that sure.
I , too, am working hard to accept people as they are ,not put them in a cookie cutter mold of my fantasy about who I want them to be. Do we dare to believe that God , too, cherishes, the very uniqueness of each one of us–quirky, funny, sad, broken , joy -filled. We join God by being cherished and find , paradoxically, that we are all One in God. Our individual, unique, cherished drop of water merges into the SEA of God’s LOVE. AMEN to that!!!
Amen and Amen
I have had to push myself in the last couple of days for reasons of my wife’s momentary bad health, my weakness, and having to secure our holiday home against an ex cyclone coming this weekend. However when we go back home and while I was getting some gutters there declogged I found a song in my heart of victory. Our God lifts us out of oppression , I experience God as Saving -that’s the closest I can get to cherishing