What is Our Obligation to God?

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I’m reflecting today on a simple, searching question. What is our obligation to God? Standing in the midst of ordinary life, even on a quick family trip, I’m reminded that God is the ground in which we live, breathe, and have our being, so the question matters. The answer begins deep within us. Swedenborg teaches that our inner life is our heaven, connected with angels, while our outer life is our earth, meant to express what lives inside. As he writes in Secrets of Heaven, the Lord is called the God of heaven because of His divinity in our inner lives, and the God of earth because that same divinity longs to be lived out here. That’s the movement. Heaven into earth. Soul into action. The glory of God is the person fully alive, and our obligation is simply this. Live it. Take the compassion, kindness, remorse, and care that rise up in us and let them walk around in the world. As in heaven, so upon the earth. Like a loving parent, God is far less concerned with being admired and far more interested in whether we are taking care of one another. So I keep a question close to my heart, one I saw on a coffee mug and couldn’t shake. “What good shall I do this day?” Ask it in the morning. Ask it again at noon. Trust that God will place opportunities in your path. That is our obligation to God today.