As we know from the Old Testament, David, the prophet and king was an elightened and holy man. In his Psalms he writes: `
`I keep my eyes always on the Lord. With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.`[1]
He always saw God standing on his right with the eyes of his soul and this helped him not to shake at the temptations of the sin. He had the power to understand Him, to perceive Him, to see Him in a mysterious way. And thus avoiding sin he advanced in the contemplation of God.
How did David the king and the prophet see God? This to be reached by someone implies holiness. He went over the beginning stages and in the course of the time he received the grace and the special power of God to be able to keep in his memory and his soul the remembrance of His presence.
If we had this remembrance this possibility to see with the eyes of our soul that God guards us, listens to us and we move in Him, we would have more vigilance and avoid sin. And by running away of sin we would reach purity and we could approach the Most Pure God. How much fear would be in our soul if we had this view of God.
The man deviates from the path of God and follows the path of sin and of the devil because he doesn`t have the power to know and understand that God is present everywhere, that any of his deeds and thoughts is known to God and He, Who sees everything, will be one day his Judge.
We must anchor in this thought in this remembrance of the omnipresence of God. Before a great man we could not behave shamelessly. We could not even do what would bring shame before a small child. We are ashamed of people for not being despised or condemned, for not decreasing in their eyes and lose their good impression about us. We are careful not to do anything wrong from the wish to please people because we see them with our physical eyes and we don`t want to expose ourselves. If we had spiritual sight to see the Heavenly Father, our Creator, our Judge, think how carefully we would live.
When a passion pushes me to deviate from the path of God if I think that God sees me and I would upset Him, that I would upset this endless Love, I will take heed not to fall into that passion.
Thus the reason of our estrangement of God is the fact that we don`t see Him. It is terrible to live in Him and don`t see Him. Of course the nature of God cannot be understood. But we the knowledge He gave us we can see His attributes, His works, as a cause to reach the primary cause of everything, which is God. And with this contemplation we bring God very close to us. We don`t imagine Him with a face, since according to His nature He has no face. But we live with the awareness and with the thought that we stand before Him and His sleepless eye sees us.
David the prophet said: `You all are gods sons of the Most elevated.`
This state is a higher one. In the afterlife all those who will be worthy of salvation will live indeed as gods, of course not according to nature but to grace. Thus in the afterlife the saved soul will be profoundly delighted by the bliss of God. A rusty iron if it falls in a strong fire gets burning and borrows the attributes of fire. In the same way the saved soul will become entirely light and bliss, because he will understand the nature of God and will become a partaker of the ineffable things belonging to God.
God by His love and mercy according to His nature wanted to make His creatures and make them worthy of His divine grace and make them small gods. From inexpressible love He created the angels and men to delight of Him. But all His other creations fill us of happiness and delight and lead us to know Him.
Let`s take a small flower. We see it having such a smell and we wonder how is possible for such a small flower which withers and dies so quickly to have such a fragrance. If God gave such grace to these things which perish for those of His creatures who will reach heaven what unchanged and eternal blessings He may have prepared.
And if all these things He created here on earth and up in the skies delight so much the people and the angels – be it light, smell, beauty – how will He be then in His nature? If all these were created out of His plenitude, then what will He personally be?
[1] Psalm 16, 8.
Excerpt from the book The Art of Salvation, published by Evanghelismos.
