God also deserves our service because he continually sustains our existence

February 25, 2022 • 2 min

From The Sinner’s Guide, page 34
By Venerable Louis of Granada

CHAPTER III.

THE THIRD MOTIVE WHICH OBLIGES US TO SERVE GOD: THE BENEFIT OF OUR PRESERVATION, AND THE GOVERNMENT OF HIS PROVIDENCE.

Another motive which obliges man to serve God is the benefit of preservation. God gave you being, and still preserves it to you, for you are as powerless to subsist without Him as you were incapable of coming into existence without Him.

The benefit of preservation is not less than that of creation. It is even greater, for your creation was but a single act, while your preservation is a continuous manifestation of God’s abiding love. If, then, your creation demand from you so great a return of gratitude, who can reckon the debt you owe for the gift of preservation?

There is not a movement of your eye, there is not a step you take, which is not by His power. For if you do not believe that it is through Him you live and act, you are no longer a Christian; and if, believing it, you continue deliberately to offend your Benefactor, how can I say what you are?

If a man on the top of a high tower held another suspended by a small cord over an abyss, do you think the latter would dare to address injurious words to him who held him thus suspended? How is it, then, that you, whose existence hangs by a thread which God can sever at any moment, dare excite the anger of this infinite Majesty by outraging Him with the very benefits He mercifully preserves to you?