God loves us. If I could change one thing about the world that would be it. I would want people to really understand how loved they are, how treasured, how much value they have. There is so much pain and misery out there, so much wounding and chaos, and often it completely blinds people to all the beauty right in front of them, to how precious and valuable life is, their life.
God is not people. He hasn’t got the small mindedness of people, the cruelty, the never ending power plays and family bullying and alienation that goes on. He is not a romance gone wrong or a human failure. He is not condemnation or pride or arrogance. That is actually a tough concept to wrap one’s brain around because remove all the human frailties and what’s left? God is what’s left, God and the higher selves of men. Those higher selves of ours actually belong to Him, that is what He created us to be. Then He placed us in a garden. We’ve mucked up the garden a bit ever since.
God is such a huge concept that words are simply inadequate. I can do my best to explain how I see Him, what I perceive His nature to be, how He has intervened in my life, but even that is limited by my own perceptions. God speaks to everyone in their own language, in a language only they will really understand. I’m a girl, something I rather enjoy, so when I try to describe what having a relationship with Christ is like, it’s very romantic, like a fairytale, with elements of a treasure hunt and an epic adventure, too. It really is like being in love, but even better. His love is steadfast and unwavering.
One of my Father’s favorite bits of scripture was, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” It comes towards the end of 1 Corinthians 13, the love chapter.
Sometimes walking here on Earth is a bit like being trapped, peering out at our own existence through an ancient piece of glass, darkly colored, curved and full of bubbles.
Beyond that glass however, is a God that loves us, that knows each of us individually, every hair on our head, every detail of our lives, our suffering, our struggles, our failures. He knows these things and He still loves us. We belong to Him, we are His, and He is so worthy of our praises.
*****Repost from 2014
See, there's this thing called biology... 
Ah yes, through the dark looking glass. 😉 Alice in Wonderland and God all in one. Woo!
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Yes, in this world full of miscreants (of which I took up quite a bit of acreage) we are reminded that God SO loved THIS world…………then you remind us by wrapping up your thoughts: ‘we are His……and He is SO worthy of our praises.’
Yes, and amen.
Nice work friend
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Amen sister, great post
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Yes. God is love in spite of us and our limited thinking.
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That’s one or my favs. It shoes up in literature all the time.
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Sometimes get jealous of Him. But it quickly fades because I know we all need to know Him like this. He’s our closest friend, our dearest brother, our knight in shinning armor, and lover of our souls.
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Nice post IB – I agree. I would like to add that I think that all of our failings are actually misapplied concepts. We have a bad habit of doing the wrong thing at the wrong time for the wrong reason. It isn’t our true nature that is flawed but rather our interpretation if it. (I got into this line of thought as i could not understand how God could have made such imperfection when He is perfect – and i realized that what he gave us is perfect, it is our use of it that is imperfect.) For example – one of the sins is greed. This can be loosely interpreted as wanting to have it all, and/or always wanting more. We apply this desire to the physical world – where it is negative- pursuing the collection of things and ownership. But if we look at this same definition in terms of the spiritual world – then the driving concept of “greed” becomes very positive and we do actually become a part of everything and pursue spirutality and completeness through understanding and wisdom by the grace of God. When you consider the various sins – you soon find that each one has a positive side simply by changing how, when and where we apply them. Therein lies God’s perfection and our gift of choice with which we seek Him. (And create ourselves in the process).
Great Post IB. Thank You.
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That’s a good point, Paul. I notice that too. It’s almost like we’re trying to read words in a mirror, something just gets lost in translation. People are really good at taking the truth and just reversing it. I’m not sure what you’d call spiritual greed, thirst, perhaps? There’s nothing wrong with the desire itself, we just muck it up when we apply it to worldly things with a kind of selfishness.
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“Sometimes walking here on Earth is a bit like being trapped, peering out at our own existence through an ancient piece of glass, darkly colored, curved and full of bubbles.”
That is an interesting realization to make. No wonder our sight and perception can be so misleading
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“…how He has intervened in my life, but even that is limited by my own perceptions” So important to understand this also, as part of the whole theme of this post. One thing I pray for is that He would interpret our experiences for us. I’m thinking that there is nothing more foundational than to understand and embrace God’s love for each of us individually.
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Me, too! One thing I love about the bible is how there is something there for everyone. So, there are farmers who have become great theologians, great Christians, because of the language they found there that they could relate to. Then there are people like me that see a love story in those pages. We all pretty much arrive at the same place, but everyone experiences it in their own way. God is like that too, He speaks to us in away we as individuals can understand.
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Whoa, I got freaked out for a moment; I read this beautiful, poetic post and then I scrolled down and read the comments…and I saw Paul’s comment – not realizing this was a repost. And your post, and his comment: “what he gave us is perfect, it is our use of it that is imperfect” puts it all into perspective.
No, we can never fully see or comprehend God – not yet. All we can do is allow the Spirit to work in us and stay open to His Living Word, to let His grace and unconditional love continue to transform us day by day until we have the sweet pleasure of walking arm in arm with him for eternity.
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I am curious, how does love allow someone to die of starvation? To die burned to death in a building by people of another faith? For all of the claims of miracles by theists, why do theists take refuge in trying to blame humans for all of the bad things that happen when their god does absolutely nothing? If I was omnipotent, I’d certainly do my best not to let people die of starvation, of parasites, of the actions of other humans. My morality and love are quite a bit better than this god’s.
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I wish I could help to show you the lack of logic lurking behind your words. You are accusing God of being bad because He does not always protect humans from our own selves. WE are the ones engaging in the sin and yet at the same time we are declaring ourselves to be morally superior to God Himself. That is a contradiction, a logical fallacy, because either we are good and holy and pure or we are capable of great depravity. The fact that we try to blame God for the acts of men, even a God we refuse to believe in, suggests disordered and irrational thinking, which then calls into question whether we are worthy to be judging God’s morality.
If your “morality and love are quite a bit better than this god’s,” than why have you failed to protect all the people from harm? Are you incompetent or do you just not care?
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There is no lack of logic at all, IB. You have yet to show that there is. I am not accusing this god of being “bad” but of not existing at all, and pointing out that Christians invent excuses for their god that does nothing.
“Sin” is a term to try to claim that some god approves of some actions and disapproves of others. Christians can’t even agree on what sin actually consists of. Indeed, sin has been claimed for daring to have anesthesia for surgery, to marry someone who is a different skin tone than you, etc. So, yes, I am quite happy in showing that I am more moral than your god that you’ve invented and reinvented as humans have grown more humane as we have advanced in knowledge.
It’s hilarious to see you claim a logical fallacy when your claim that humans are somehow all depraved or all holy and pure have no evidence to support them at all. Again, IB, humans don’t always do harmful things and they don’t always do beneficial things. Since theists can’t agree on what sin is, there is no reason to think that your fantasies are some basis of moral truth. You all insist that your god is the only right one, that your morals are the only right ones, and surprise, none of you have any evidence of that. You all fail in your claims of knowing your god’s supposed morality.
Now, I can just read the bible and point out that this god’s described morality is far less than mine or most people in the world. I don’t need people to blindly worship me. I don’t need to demand that anyone who doesn’t obey me is killed. I don’t require genocide of people who worship another god and I certainly don’t approve of slavery which your god repeatedly supports. I’m not an omnipotent being that allows a man’s family to be murdered to win a bet. I wouldn’t ask man to murder his son for me, and I wouldn’t accept the murder of a man’s daughter when he was silly enough to promise to use the next thing he saw as a burnt offering to me.
Hmmm, why have I failed to protect everyone from harm? I’m not an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent being. Is that why your god does nothing, that it isn’t any of those things either? Thanks, IB. You’ve done my work for me.
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