As a woman who's had some serious travails, I've heard all manner of comments about God's intentions in my life. When I had a miscarriage and D & C (at a Catholic hospital) the nun who tended to me when I woke from the anethesia, crying my heart out, told me that Jesus wanted my baby. To which I replied, in my head and my heart and,very possibly, with my mouth, "Not as god-damn much as I wanted it!" After my daughter was diagnosed with autism I was told that God never gave us more than we could handle. Then I had a nervous breakdown. Ooops. Dished out a little too much there big guy.
But, of course, I pray to God for help when I'm in need, see God's face in the wildly unnecessary beauty of the world. So I've pondered this question of God's intentions and intervention for some time now. And here's what I've finally come up with. I don't believe that God directs and decides all things. I don't believe God took my baby or that God made my daughter autistic. I believe that God set this world in motion and that there is randomness in the recipe for life. I also believe that in chosing how we face these things that come our way - in chosing whether to turn away from them or walk toward them - we can chose to live our lives as expressions of God's love, pure and equal, for all things - for me wounded and weeping for that little scrap of life I'd just lost, for my autistic daughter with her deep neurological myseries, for a butterfly that lives one day of perfect beauty and then dies. So as we receive, we can try to give. That's what I decided.
2 comments:
Sounds like you're a Deist (if so, you're in pretty good company, as Thomas Jefferson was one). Create the pieces, set up the rules, wind up the clock, and let it tick.
Maybe I am! And Jefferson is certainly interesting company. Can't fault the man's thinking, even if we might fault some of his actions....
Thanks for the thought. E
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