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Gas - Our reflections lead us into more than gas.
Our first thoughts might be about gas as a fuel for cars, the ongoing price increases for gas that affect drivers, and all the political maneuvering behind it all. Gas, in the chemical sense of the word, is not a liquid like gasoline, but is in the familiar form of air. We know that gas can be completely invisible, and that if we cannot smell it, its presence will be unrecognized unless or until it is manifested in its effects, like for example, the squeaky voice of deep-sea divers who breathe a mix of oxygen and nitrogen gases.
On a much grander scale, many of us know a little about how the universe is composed of hot stars, like the sun, that are formed primarily by extremely cold gases, such as hydrogen and other elements, so strongly affected by gravity that star formation takes place. Science can describe many such processes, including how fossils, over eons in the earth, change into the gas we use for fuel. But only faith can legitimately provide an explanation for how everything in nature, from the cosmic scale down to the foundations of subatomic particles, became the environment in which we now exist.
We can live without knowing where gas comes from, and we can live without believing that Love is the force, power, and source of who we are, where we are, and of our ultimate purpose and future. But as humans, we have an inbuilt propensity for wanting not just to know about how we come to be, but also our ultimate concerns about life itself. We can choose to ignore these deeper human concerns and simply continue breathing air and paying for and using some forms of gas, but we might thereby miss out on becoming the stars into which we are meant to be formed. Unlike the cold gas of space that gravity pulls together for the creation of stars, we are free to avoid or cooperate with the pull of love that desires to bring us to the bright shining of our fulfillment in eternal life.
Another way of describing this radical option is to consider the difference between ideas and experiences. We could think, believe, and even proclaim to others that we are self-sufficient, and that what we have in ourselves whatever makes us valuable and brings us satisfaction. However, our experience, if we reflect a bit, reveals that without relationships with others, we are no one, and that loving and being loved is far more satisfying than having power and control, which are temporary and conditional.
Given the choice, which interplanetary gas does not have, we can let the attractive force of God, who is Love, draw us into an eternal relationship about which our intuitive knowledge reveals this: “love does not come to an end.”
Last Updated 9/19/2026