THE LONG ROAD WE TRAVEL

Life can be funny, as we go along the path of life, we realize the end is never in sight but we know it will end someday. As we travel we carry our luggage with us, and the more steps we take the more the luggage becomes packed. Then one day something happens: the luggage tells us this is the last stop, we are finished, and the road has ended.

It really doesn’t matter who we are or where we stand in the scheme of things, we all travel and become burdened then we come to the end of our roads. God planned it that way, become, travel and finally rest.

The problem is that when he puts us on our journey, we expect something from him, after all, we hear about a loving God, a compassionate God, and a healing God, some of us lose out on the attributes we associate with God.

Our lives are of our own free will, we go and do, God does not carry a torch for us to light the way, he does not determine what we become or even who we become, he sets us on our way. If we choose to believe in Him, we must be willing to accept that fact that he only watches, he only listens and speaks to us in our minds and souls, leaving our hearts to ourselves. He does not affect the outcomes with prayers from us, and reason would suggest for good reasons. He is not a tool of ours.

Today is Mom’s birthday. She first introduced me to God a long time ago and taught me plenty with love and the business end of a wooden spoon. When she wasn’t crafting a beautiful simple dinner from the love she was teaching me that love has to be earned and the concept should be practiced as well as received.

God gave Mom life, and a road and as she traveled that road she gathered children along the way and taught her life lessons to us. What she taught me was to be as compassionate as possible, not be judgmental to the point of not understanding, but to try to walk in their shoes those we judge. She like me was never faultless in her life, but she tried and so do I.

As I watch my daughter Ellen lie suffering, I question God why? I ask what she did that she deserves all the pain and hardships she has endured all her life. Where is the justice? How can I love God or even believe when these things happen. Then I think of mom and dad who showed me by their examples that it is not a god of control but a god of judgment in the end. That millions of babies that suffered and died through the centuries including my son, are all the fault of no one but the course of a natural life, a life we spend on the rod, and that the journey may not be an equal or fair one for all of us, but in the end God will judge us on how we lived with it.

So, how do we determine God’s presence, His work and our place in the scheme of things? I look around the hospital as I write this and notice the many suffering, the many near death, the many families that wait in despair and I realize that his presence is within the hands of the doctors and nurses that supply the chance for healing, the opportunity to travel to little further. They, the doctors and nurses do God’s work, they are the result of the loving God, the compassionate God, and the healing God, the one we seek and beseech.

Today Ellen goes under the knife as the surgeon tries to remove an aggressive mass of cancer that is threatening her life, on her grandmother’s birthday. Maybe Mom will help me one more time.

 

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Happy birthday Mom and thanks.

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