He posted the question on Facebook.
How many of you honestly believe god is real?
I look out at birds perched in stripped branches that in just a couple of months will pop pink. Browns will gush green, the sun will beat warm, and the air will hang heavy with the fragrance of lilacs and peonies. A blue jay lands on the edge of the bath and drinks long. A doe bounds through the field. I see all this through my own personal camera, this jellied globe that encloses millions of processing cells.
How can this all be random?
How can we see and not believe?
The moon hangs white in the western sky as the sun rises in the east. I think of how we’re the perfect distance from each to survive in this space that spins dizzy, a blue and white lifeboat in a black sea.
They say the eye is an engineering miracle. In tandem with the brain, we can see the beauty and the wonder of God’s creation. Through it He unveils His presence and His fingerprints.
But the basic reality of God is plain enough. Open your eyes and there it is! By taking a long and thoughtful look at what God has created, people have always been able to see what their eyes as such can’t see: eternal power, for instance, and the mystery of his divine being. So nobody has a good excuse. ~Romans 1:19-23 (MSG)
It’s hard to see the wonder, though, if we don’t slow down.
If we don’t stop.
If we don’t just be for a bit.
Maybe we spell belief wrong. Maybe we should spell it be-life.
Switch a couple letters sideways.
Because the Kingdom is sideways.
It’s in the being that we begin to believe.
And in the believing we begin to to find life.
I’m telling you the most solemn and sober truth now: Whoever believes in me has real life, eternal life. ~John 6:47 (MSG)
Maybe we should just take the e[go] out of believe–be-live. because isn’t it our ego that refuses to believe?
Thomas, he refused to believe unless He reached into Jesus, saw Him with his own eyes.
And yet that tangible touch is not real. What you see is not me. The real me is invisible, a soul housed, everywhere present in a tangle of DNA and billions of cells in this space–like God inhabits space.
For a short time, He confined Himself to this place.
I can stake my life on Him because He staked His life for me.
Someone responds, “If there was a God, little kids wouldn’t be abused…”
I don’t understand this either except that this world is fallen because we, our egos, got in the way. I don’t understand how He chooses how or when or if to intervene in suffering because I know He can and has. Maybe He has, and I just haven’t seen it.
Kris explains our sight to her children like we’re looking through a toilet paper tube. We have a narrow perspective. God sees the whole picture.
I run my index finger along the red thread that runs along my right thumb. I think about the choreographed blood clotting cascade that seals sliced skin.
I ponder how we are perfectly designed to live in a perfectly protected place, perfectly situated in a universe designed for discovery.
How can I not believe?
How can I live in hopelessness?
He’s created us to be, to believe, to live, to see, to hope in something and someone and someplace beyond ourselves.
Red feathers of hope look down on me.
Thomas said, “My Master! My God!”
Jesus said, “So, you believe because you’ve seen with your own eyes. Even better blessings are in store for those who believe without seeing.” ~John 20:28-29 (MSG)
Yes, I believe.
Honestly.
Still,
Sandy
With Emily in community
I wonder what clicks to make us believers. Is it all the work of the Holy Spirit? Do we have to be called? Predestined for salvation? I have a friend who’s searched and studied for years but hasn’t made a profession of faith. It concerns me. What is (or isn’t) it?
I wish I knew what buttons to push, Brandee–what clicks. What makes someone reach out to Him as a child or in later years or on their deathbed–or not at all. I don’t have the answers, either. Are we all called, and it’s up to us to respond? Are we predestined for salvation or for being conformed to His image once we respond? How does He move heaven and earth to get the gospel to one who is seeking? I don’t know what to do but to trust that He’s got it all under control while I do my part on my knees.
sandy, i am so much like you – i believe from the created world all around me. so often it is my sermon, my confession, my believing-without-fully-seeing.
but i also believe with every click of my mouse as i visit friends (like you) who love. for love is of God and anyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. and this is the evidence that i can’t ignore: i am loved.
and i stand in awe at how He loves me so loudly sometimes through the words, hugs, prayers, even smiles, of another made of dust, though we are.
a beautiful post, friend. thanks.
Oh so true, Kelli, that we see Him reflected in others, in His created beloveds–even here online. I see Him in you and in your words.