“Upon my bed in the nights I sought the One I love. I sought Him, and I found Him not.” (Song of Songs 3:1)
As we have seen, the nights represent not only negative traits and trends but also their outcome. By simple association, we can't enjoy the goodness of life in the midst of evil, for love does not dwell with anything different from its ways and attributes.
In this context, we are not able to find the redeeming blessings of God's love in the deep sleep of ego's fantasies and illusions. The latter belong to the realm of the “nights” where we suffer their destructive predicament.
We understand this situation as if God's love is hidden from us. God's infinite loving kindness and compassion never cease to sustain His entire creation! It's similar to imagine that He would remove the air from us. We are the ones who hide from God's love by choosing ego's materialistic desires instead of the goodness of love's ways and attributes. Hence we have to realize that the ways of goodness do not cohabit with negative ways. This verse may suggest abandonment and weariness, and these are the result of our separation from God's ways.
Goodness is the seed we plant in every positive action, and a lifestyle of goodness is its harvest. Hence we must rejoice more in the harvest than in the seed, yet the seed will be always more precious for being the primary cause of the goodness in which we rejoice. Likewise, God rejoices more in the harvest of His works.
Goodness is the cause and the purpose of God’s creation, as it is written, “And God saw everything that He had made; and behold, very good.” (Genesis 1:31). Thus we understand that we were created by the goodness of God’s love in order to manifest goodness as a divine destiny we only can transgress by choosing to reject it. We do this knowing that evil exists not as an option but only as a reference for us to choose goodness.
Israel is commanded to be, have and do goodness in order to fulfill her destiny as “the light unto the nations”. Here we also see the goodness inherent to light, as the Creator points it out, “And God saw the light, that [is] good” (Ibid. 1:4). Hence being, having and doing goodness are the means to show humankind the path to return to God; for goodness is man's common bond with Him.
Thus we must face and defeat adversities and obstacles through the strength of the goodness in us, by bringing out the best in us. The material world (the earth) is destined to reflect the spiritual world (the heavens), for the former is sustained by the latter. As we just mentioned, God is the source and sustenance of all that is and His goodness pervades all His creation.
“The loving kindness of the Lord fills all the earth.” (Psalms 33:5)
We can understand this by realizing that God’s goodness already fills the material world, which implies that it is our job to see goodness and reveal it when we don’t see it. This means that when we are in places or situations where we don’t see goodness, we are commanded to make it manifest, in order to fulfill our destiny to be the light for the nations. Thus we understand goodness as the light to dissipate the darkness of negative traits and trends in consciousness.
We also understand this as the imperative to make reflect in the material world the goodness inherent to the highest realms of God’s creation we know as the heavens. This is the premise to enter the final redemption and the merit to live, to behold, and to inherit the goodness and blessing of the Messianic era and the life in the world to come.
Thus we engage in a lifetime process of constant change through refining all levels and dimensions of consciousness to achieve their complete functional harmonic unity known as peace. We have referred to peace as a multidimensional all-encompassing quality that integrates completeness, wholesomeness and totality.
We call it functional because it implies a purpose. It is the prelude, the preceding state or precondition to approach unfathomable works and wonders of the spiritual world that reflects God’s perfection.
The objective is to overcome and transcend ego’s fantasies and illusions along with their negative traits and trends, and serve God’s will through love’s attributes as the sources of goodness and the leading means and qualities of the Messianic era. These direct us to the light God’s love saved for the righteous that make goodness their continuous expression, for only goodness permeates the Messianic consciousness.
The encompassing, integrating, unifying and harmonizing qualities of love’s ways bring completion to the material world. Thus we fulfill our part of the covenant with the Creator of all.
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