We are all children of God. But we are also children of the world, for this is where God planted us. In time we can become so attached to the world that we forget where we came from and where we are meant to return. Some of us make it back to God, and some of us don’t.
Becoming a child of the world is a necessary part of life. If an acorn doesn’t germinate, it can never become a tree. It sinks no roots. It takes no stand. It does not grow and it makes no impact. It is pure potential without expression. It is the idea of a tree, without the tree. And the same is true of us. We must have roots in the world if we are going to transform the world. Like Jacob wrestling the angel, we must wrestle with the world if we are to know God.
William Wordsworth said that “Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting.” We fall asleep to heaven as we enter the trance of the world. If you are to complete your mission on this earth, you must reawaken to God and the reality of your soul, without disowning the world. You must allow the truth and creative wisdom of your soul to blossom and bear fruit in the world of human relationships and struggles. Here you nourish, and are nourished by, others.