WHAT WE BELIEVE

I often hear the words: “Why did God let this happen?”

A child dies, a good loving person, maybe a young teenager with all the hope for the future is snuffed out in the prime of life. “Why did God let this happen?”

You read the newspapers or on the Internet, maybe you are a victim of a Hurricane or some accident, and: “Why did God let this happen?” And so it goes, every accident, every disaster, every tragedy in life: “Why did God let this happen?”

Well I think something that may shock you. God has nothing to do with it! This I believe because if he did control things so tightly, he would be micromanaging and there would be no need for our lives to continue. He built the firmament and the Earth from nothing and us with it. It’s what we do in it and to it that will matter.

If you were to go through your life unscathed, untouched and without fears, tears and joys, what would you have? Where is the purpose of your life?

Sometimes we get caught up in the idea that we as Christians or Jews are the only ones who know the score, other religions do not have that link to God that we do. We praise Jesus Christ as a savior, and we lose sight of God the Devine Being.  The Muslims, the Jews the Asian religions all won’t be saved because of a lack of Jesus, like he is the panacea for all our ills as humans. WE as Christians have the inside track on heaven! Do we really? Did God create these people other than Christian by mistake? Did he create them out of error, or are we doing what we have been doing for centuries as a Christian world, being intolerant and wrong about our rights?

The one destructive force, that has been the underlining ingredient to all wars in this worlds history is: religion, it has killed more people than any other reason. And we as Christians are not alone in this blame, just look to the Middle East and Osama Ben-Laden, as well as looking at the ugliness of Adolf Hitler and then the oppression in the Far East in Tibet.

So we go to war or we ignore the needy, those on this Earth because God put them there like he did you and me. Each of us come from our own inherited circumstance, each of us has needs and wants, and talents to lend to each other. Each of us is responsible for what we do with our lives. There are those of us with issues that need immediate understanding and help that need a lifting hand to reach down and take us from the gutter and clean us off, heal us from an affliction, and understand our pain and sorrow. And for those of us when we are down, need to be accepting of each other, take the help with grace, and learn that nothing in life in guaranteed, no one will totally agree with us, that nothing is coming to us.

It all will come down to what we did in this lifetime of ours, that helped each of us get through the hard times as well as the good times. Did we give someone a drink of water or a piece of bread, did we ignore that crying child or that hungry man, did we harden our hearts to the dying and the suffering?

Religion is the communication of man to God, the relationship man builds with God, not in the confines of an organized religion, not in the midst of brick and mortar, but in the midst and confines of our hearts and minds and those we share the Earth with.

I often wonder: Who is God? True he is the Supreme Being who made all things, but his presence must be felt somehow. I see a baby smile, a man healed by a doctor, and cared for by a nurse, a child taught by a teacher or a mother’s love, and I see God’s presence. We are all a part of that wonderful world of God’s. And so many of us do what is right, we bring cheer to the sick and meals to the grieving, we sit with the dying and we hold their hand, we offer shelter when it is needed and understanding when there are tears. Is that not God at work?

There will be a day of reckoning, a day in which we will be accountable to God, this I do believe. I will be in line with the Jew, the Christian, the Muslim, and we will be all answering the same question from God: Why did YOU let this happen?