God

'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'

'But,' says Man, 'The Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'

'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanished in a puff of logic.

'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.

Is it significant that a back-to-front dog becomes God, while a slightly more contorted cat becomes act (probably with a small 'a')?? Must have a word with Sirius (which reminds me, on behalf of all cats, why is there no cat-star?)

God Moves in a Mysterious Way
by William Cowper

God moves in a mysterious way
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps in the sea,
And rides upon the storm.

Deep in unfathomable mines
Of never-failing skill
He treasures up His bright designs,
And works His sovereign will.

Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take,
The clouds ye so much dread
Are big with mercy, and shall break
In blessings on your head.

Judge not the Lord by feeble sense,
But trust Him for His grace;
Behind a frowning providence
He hides a smiling face.

His purposes will ripen fast,
Unfolding every hour;
The bud may have a bitter taste,
But sweet will be the flower.

Blind unbelief is sure to err,
And scan his work in vain;
God is His own interpreter,
And He will make it plain.

Once or twice--well, no, not a god, actually, but a responsive spider. 1. sitting on the ground with her (then)lover, Ted, in some afternoon-filtered sunshine. Late late autumn in a part of the world where winter barely arrives --the sun is still strong on on skin and clothes are still light weight. Ted is leaving soon and they are uncertain of when they will see each other again. Ted sees a tiny spider walking on the leg of his jeans. He says to the spider, »Tie me to Belle--c'mon, I'll give you a quarter.«
Immediately, like a close up slo-motion sequence from a PBS science special: the spider launches a gossamer web thread into the air, with a kind of shower of crystal almost-sparks, the thread sails across the gap between the lovers and connects at Belle's knee. The spider walks across.

An agnostic dyslexic insomniac is someone who stays awake all night wondering if there really is a dog.

Please tell me why God allowed over 6000 innocent people to be murdered on September 11, 2001?

Answer?

I don’t know.

Where was God?

I don’t know.

When Leslie Weatherhead, a minister in London during the Second World War, was asked by a member in his congregation where God was when his son was killed in a bombing raid, Weatherhead replied, »I guess he was where he was when his son was killed.«

And where was that?

I don’t know.

Isn’t »I don’t know« too ambiguous? Isn’t »I don’t know« an unconvincing way to convince young people Christianity is true?

Actually, »I don’t know« confirms one critical truth about Christianity…it’s a mystery!

Jesus loves us, right?

Of course.

So if he loves us, he protects us, right?

If he loves us…he is with us.

Jesus can heal, can’t he? And perform miracles?

Of course. Just not very often.

Why?

I don’t know.

What about God’s will?

My youth director says we’re supposed to seek God’s will. There are lots of verses in the Bible that tell us to do God’s will, aren’t there? God does have a will, right?

Absolutely.

Trouble is God’s will is not like a to-do list. It’s more like an undecipherable code. The Bible definitely gives us some clues about the code of God’s will, which means we can figure out part of it; but, because it’s God, we will never crack the code.

Clues?

Yeah, like, follow me, serve me, love me, live by my commandments, point people to me.

That’s it? Just follow me, serve me, love me and trust me?

That’s about it.

What do you mean »that’s about it?«

You don’t want to know.

Yes I do.

We get a cross.

Cross????? What does that mean?

I don’t know.

But God does heal people, doesn’t he?

Certainly.

And miracles do happen, don’t they.

Right.

So we can count on God helping us, can’t we?

We can count on God being God.

Which means…??

I don’t know.

And what does that mean?

It means we can trust God if we lost someone in the WTC or if they survived.

It means we can trust God when we have cancer and when we’re healed.

We can trust God if we survive a natural disaster or if we don’t.

We can trust God when we get a glimpse of Divine will and when we don’t.

We can trust God in the answers and the questions, in the good and the bad, in the light and the dark, when we’re winning and when we’re losing.

We can trust God even when the Truth doesn’t answer all our questions or leaves us with even more questions.

And, most importantly, just beyond our »I don’t know’s,« Jesus is waiting with open arms to snuggle us in the mystery of his love.

God, the center and focus of religious faith, a holy being or ultimate reality to whom worship and prayer are addressed. Especially in monotheistic religions, God is considered the creator or source of everything that exists and is spoken of in terms of perfect attributes—for instance, infinitude, immutability, eternity, goodness, knowledge (omniscience), and power (omnipotence). Most religions traditionally ascribe to God certain human characteristics that can be understood either literally or metaphorically, such as will, love, anger, and forgiveness.

I am God. You are God. My cat is God. Well, actually, 'God' isn't really the word I'm searching for. Let's call it 'anima mundi' – world soul.

In his book, The Easy Yoke, Doug Webster retells a great Wil Willimon story about a young, idealistic college student who ended up in one of the worst-looking housing projects in Philadelphia.

A brand-new Christian, this wide-eyed urban missionary didn’t have a clue how to evangelize in the middle of the city. Frightened and anxious to share his new faith, the young man approached a very large, intimidating tenement house. Cautiously making his way through the dark, cluttered hallways, he walked up a flight of stairs and heard a baby crying. The baby was inside one of the apartments. He knocked on the door and was met by a woman holding a naked baby. She was smoking, and she was not in the mood to hear about Jesus. She cursed at the boy and slammed the door. The young man was devastated. He walked outside, slumped down on the street curb, and cried. »Look at me,« he said to himself. »How in the world could someone like me think I could tell anyone about Jesus?«

Then the young man looked up and saw a dilapidated old store on the corner. It was open, and he went inside and walked around. It was then that he remembered the baby in the tenement was naked and that the woman was smoking. So he bought some diapers and a pack of cigarettes and headed back to the woman’s apartment. He knocked on the door, and before the woman could start cursing him, he slid the cigarettes and diapers inside the open door.

The woman invited him in.

The student played with the baby. He put a diaper on the baby—even though he’d never put a diaper on a baby before. And when the woman asked him to smoke, he smoked—even though he’d never smoked before. He spent the whole day playing with the baby, changing diapers, and smoking.

Late in the afternoon the woman asked him, »What’s a nice college boy like you doing in a place like this?« He told her all he knew about Jesus. Took him about five minutes. When he stopped talking, the woman looked at him and said, »Pray for me and my baby that we make it out of here alive.« He prayed.

This young man’s story is a freedom story. Because of his freedom in Christ, he was led by the Holy Spirit to change diapers and, well...smoke. If this young man were in your youth group and gave this testimony, I have a strong feeling many Christians wouldn’t be celebrating his freedom in Christ—they’d be asking you what was going to be done about his »indiscretion.«

Trouble is, what he did was a Spirit-led indiscretion. Paul said it best: »Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom« (2 Corinthians 3:17). And in this situation, he was free to smoke.

Uh oh. When Jesus says the truth sets us free, he isn’t kidding.

The trouble with modern Christianity is that we’ve tried to de-fang the truth. Freedom in Christ does have fangs. Sharp ones. That’s why, when Christ was around, people weren’t afraid to tear roofs apart and let little children run out of control. The freedom Jesus is about isn’t a nice, religious concept or a cute idea—it’s a wild, dangerous, shocking, upsetting, uncomfortable, daring, threatening truth. Freedom in Christ means we are free to fail and free not to fail; we are free to follow Christ and free to run from him; we are free to obey and free not to obey; we are free to sin and free not to sin.

Freedom in Christ makes us all extremely nervous. It should! Because freedom in Christ isn’t a youth ministry issue, it’s a soul issue. Although the Spirit of God calls us to freedom, many of us have allowed our bosses, our churches, and our parents to quench the Spirit and kill the life within us. Then, instead of following Christ, we start following policy, parental expectations, and staff directives. And suddenly we find ourselves exhausted, burned out—our souls lifeless and dead.

Freedom in Christ is very hazardous to our jobs, too. It means we’re more afraid of disappointing Jesus than we are of being fired. Freedom in Christ means we have the courage to ask why our staff meetings are about church business instead of about Jesus.

Freedom is a wonderfully risky consequence of listening to the wild whispers of Christ’s Holy Spirit and sharing those whispers with our students.

»Are you tired?« Jesus asks. »Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me, and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly« (Matthew 11:28-30, The Message).

What is Jesus whispering to you? Are you too busy? Then slow down. Quit programming so much. Quit trying to fix everybody. Take time to savor Jesus’ love for you—and let him run freely in your soul.

You're talking about creation, but didn't evolution disprove that?
Let's leave evolution for later, if you don't mind. We're not talking about how all things got to their present form; we're only talking about how the material universe came into existence in the first place. In that sense, yes, we're talking about creation.

This isn't contrary to the idea of evolution, and it isn't contrary to science. One of the leading astronomers of our age, for instance, Robert Jastrow, says that scientific research about the universe has led to one extremely important conclusion: "... I am an agnostic in religious matters. However, I am fascinated by some strange developments going on in astronomy‑partly because of their religious implications and partly because of the peculiar reactions of my colleagues.


"The essence of the strange developments is that the Universe had, in some sense, a beginning—that it began at a certain moment in time ... for the astronomical evidence proves that the Universe was created ... in a fiery explosion...


»Theologians generally are delighted with the proof that the Universe had a beginning, but astronomers are curiously upset. Their reactions provide an interesting demonstration of the response of the scientific mind—supposedly, a very objective mind-when evidence uncovered by science itself leads to a conflict with the articles of faith in our profession. It turns out that the scientist behaves the way the rest of us do when our beliefs are in conflict with the evidence. We become irritated, we pretend the conflict does not exist or we paper it over with meaningless phrases. « (Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, New York: Warner Books, 1984, pp. 11-16.)