My soul is satisfied as with a rich feast, and my mouth praises you with joyful lips when I think of you on my bed, and meditate on you in the watches of the night; for you have been my help, and in the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me. (Psalm 63: 5-8)

We cannot be satisfied apart from God. We can live a productive and even loving life outside a relationship with God. But only in partnership with God do we find our true self and final fulfillment.

Paul Tillich has written that God is our "ground of being." Our essential character is bound up in our origins with God. We exist. God persists beyond existence.

God can be engaged in many ways. Sabbath services, reading scripture, and liturgical prayer is one way. It is hardly the only way.

In asking for, opening to, creating, risking and embracing a relationship with God we choose a radically realistic way of living.

Tillich called this the New Being or New Reality. According to him, the outcome is that "One accepts one’s own self as something which is eternally important, eternally loved, and eternally accepted."

More on the New Being by Paul Tillich is available from thewords.com.

Above is Head of a Man by Paul Klee.