Hermit Thoughts on the Soul in God

What a glorious reality is the soul before God, the soul with God, the soul ensconced in God.  




A hymn swells within the heart: Devoted to You, O Lord.  Devoted...to You.  

And this devotion comes at any hour, any moment, whether or not consciously aware, for God IS, and the soul, created in His image and likeness, is.  What a beautiful sight and sensation, is the soul in love with God, in God.

The hermitage becomes a metaphor of the soul's encasement.   

Within is the soul and within is God, for the soul is in God, and God is within and without the soul, beyond the hermitage yet deeply, yet more deeply, within.  

The hermitage walls are a metaphor of the armor of God, and any weaknesses in this armor must be corrected, shored up, repaired, or replaced and rebuilt.  This has as much to do with ridding vices as with increasing the love, the devotion, of God and all His souls, created in His image and likeness.

As for the tricks of the devil, they are but tricks--chinks in the armor of God that surrounds each soul.  They can be as instinctive as the birds which found an opening into the enclosed porch roof, building nests that eventually will need to be removed, and the opening closed off for the health of not only the birds but the soul enclosed within the hermitage.  



The tricks of the devil can be any aspect of vice or weakness in the soul enclosed or souls out there in their own enclosures, as the devil can enter into any enclosure through any weak point or weakness of any virtue, in any soul.  That is how the evil one manipulates and operates, moving into the weaker areas even in bodily sickness through temptation to despair or in weak points in or deprivation of any of the virtues.

Prayer and devoted love to and of God bolsters the soul and strengthens the armor by God's protecting the soul  from outer elements gaining entrance to the inner.  These elements protract from human strife in the temporal life and seek penetrating the spiritual inner through physical, emotional or mental weariness, weakness, or warping.
  
Courage and strength is given for the asking.  Christ empowers the devoted soul who seeks within, the help mirroring the image of God to be reflected in the corrected and purified soul.

Consider the interior wall with each upright stud not in alignment, one with the other.  Some are in, some are out, some warped, some plumb, some not.  From footer plate to header, each slightly off, and then notice the header plate out of alignment with the footer, causing a slant not suitable for upright stance.  With but one aspect not in alignment, the whole effect is made all the worse.

There is no remedy but repair and replacement, removing the weak points, the warped, the wavering, with the true, strong, straight.  In the still and silence, in serenity and insight of the soul ensconced in God, the soul melds with what IS God, made impenetrable by sheer strength, truth, goodness, purity: His ineffable Love.