Spokes on a Wheel

I was driving along the highway, and started to think about the sorrow in the world. Mostly I was thinking of all the "little" sorrows in people's lives, not the huge tragedies and travesties that also abound. Everyone's life is full of sorrow...because this isn’t Heaven, after all!

But it made me sad anyway.

It seemed like I was seeing individual people, all of them isolated in their own little lives, thinking they know what others think of them (who loves them, who doesn't, etc.), but really not knowing – and not able to know, for the most part – the inner workings of even those they think they know best. And every now and then, they find out that these significant others don’t see them quite the way they think they do, and they are shocked and hurt. But then other people, looking at the shocked and hurt people, don't know the hurt that is there, don't see their inner workings.

 
What I’m trying to say, I think, is that even though we are the Body of Christ, we are not fully united here on earth because of our fallen human nature and our separation from God and from His will. It's a lonely place, and people are always looking for someone to be their companion, one way or another, aren't they? But Christ is the only perfect companion, and the perfection of that relationship will only be realized for us in Heaven... 

At least, that's how it seems to me. So when I see people “looking for love”, but failing to realize that their first love needs to be the Lord, I am saddened. I just see all those people...full of sorrow...but in some ways not even aware of the sadness of their lives. They don’t know how far they are from Christ, and they don’t know that the path to holiness – and therefore true happiness – lies with Him.

My spiritual director noted that the masters of the spiritual life all agree that, apart from Christ, we grow increasingly apart from one another, isolated in our own little worlds. Conversely, the more closely each of us conforms himself to Christ, the closer we come to one another; it’s like spokes on a wheel: are we approaching the rim, or the Hub?

Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me.