“Awesome Conversation between God And a Man.
Read it and don’t forget to share it with your friends.
Man: God, can I ask You a question?
God: Sure
Man: Promise You won’t get mad …
God: I promise
Man: Why did You let so much stuff happen to
me today?
God: What do u mean?
Man: Well, I woke up late
God: Yes
Man: My car took forever to start
God: Okay
Man: At lunch they made my sandwich wrong
& I had to wait
God: Huummm…
Man: On the way home, my phone went DEAD, just
as I picked up a call
God: All right
Man: And on top of it all off, when I got home
~ I just want to soak my feet in my new foot massager & relax. BUT it
wouldn’t work!!! Nothing went right today! Why did You do that?
…(here comes God’s reply)…
God: Let me see, the death angel was at your
bed this morning & I had to send one of My Angels to battle him for your
life. I let you sleep through that
Man (humbled): OH
GOD: I didn’t let your car start because there
was a drunk driver on your route that would have hit you if you were on the
road.
Man: (ashamed)
God: The first person who made your sandwich
today was sick & I didn’t want you to catch what they had, I knew you
couldn’t afford to miss work.
Man (embarrassed): Okay
God: Your phone went dead because the person
that was calling was going to give false witness about what you said on that
call, I didn’t even let you talk to them so you would be covered.
Man (softly): I see God
God: Oh and that foot massager, it had a
shortage that was going to throw out all of the power in your house tonight. I
didn’t think you wanted to be in the dark.
Man: I’m sorry God
God: Don’t be sorry, just learn to trust Me….
in All things , the good & the bad.
Man: I will trust You.
God: And don’t doubt that my plan for your day
is always better than your plan.
Man: I won’t God. And let me just tell you
God, Thank You for everything today.
God: You’re welcome child. It was just another
day being your God and I love looking after my children…”
That’s the end of the dialogue between a
loving God and his complaining child. I thought long and hard about it and came
up with a continuation of that dialogue. Please bear with me here.
“Here is the same awesome conversation between
God and the same child (a continuation)...
Man: Dear God, I thank you for sending that
angel to battle with the angel of death on my behalf. But my friend's father
just passed away in his sleep last week, after a prolonged struggle with
cancer. He died in great pain.
God: I see...didn't send my angel for him
because it’s his time.
Man: God, I’m also grateful that I didn't eat
that sandwich...it's contaminated. But just heard many children in Africa are
dying of starvation. 12 die every minute. They would have loved to eat that
contaminated sandwich just to have lived a few day longer…maybe?
God: Oh dear. That's the fallen world son.
Man: ...and about the phone and false witness
to bother me. Erm...my church friend’s grandpa just lost his life savings because
a man called and told him that his granddaughter was kidnapped and will die if
he didn’t pay the ransom immediately. He panicked and foolishly wired the money
to the caller’s account not realizing his granddaughter was safe in school.
God: Noted...but son, evil exists for the same
reason that love prevails…it’s free will.
Man: ...and about that drunk driver...it
actually hit a family with a baby no older than 2. They were going for a
holiday, heading to the airport.
God: Mm…
Man: ...and I have to thank you for that foot massager
and the blackout you averted. But almost all of North Korea is covered in pitch
darkness and many Christians there were abducted and tortured in the covers of
the night.
God: I see...it’s my sovereignty at work son.
All things will work out in the end.
Man: Anyway, thank you so much God for keeping
me safe and secure today. I count my blessings and am grateful for your
protection.
God: You're welcome son. It was just another day being your
God and I love looking after my children...”
I sincerely apologize if I come off as being flippant and
irreverent in my second post above. My point is that my friend’s post (copied
from another post) makes a mockery of our faith, belief and even God. It just
gives an unrealistic, overly-rosy, and pollyannaish misrepresentation of the
raw, sometimes unrelenting and unnerving, and visceral reality that a typical
Christian go through in his/her journey of faith. And the journey of faith is a
lifetime journey mind you. This is not to impugn the sovereignty of God in all
that He predisposes or disposes to do. Who
am I to comment about that anyway?
But for every blessing we claim in our life, there are
enough corresponding misfortune in this world - all happening at the same time and
ongoing as I write - that as a whole makes it all simply beyond our
understanding and explanation. Naturally we feel especially good, swell and
wonderful when things go smoothly for us and our family. We count our blessing
with an ever-glow-and-flow of gladness. But do we not
know that many families are going through their own personal hell at the same time
and there is simply no hard and fast explanation for their pain and suffering?
Dare anyone come up with self-serving, ego-stoking explanation for their own
blessings so called and conveniently turn a blind eye to the suffering of
others? Is this how our God operates? Or is this how we want Him to operate?
You see, every marriage celebrated comes with spousal
abuses, child neglects, adultery and divorces we hardly celebrate or announce.
Every healing via persistent breakthrough prayer is also accompanied by numerous
silent physical sufferings and death the victims and loved ones would be too jaded
to share. And every success story is foreshadowed by even more failures that often
results in mental depression, disillusionment and even suicides.
So am I trying to be a
sourpuss here and talk Christians out of being thankful and grateful for just
being alive notwithstanding the ongoing trials, pain and negative reports? Of
course not. We are in fact called to rejoice and give thanks always for the
good as well as the bad. We are called to be overcomers, and in our weakness
and poverty, we are strong and rich in Him.
But my bugbear with my friend’s post is that it makes
faith into a Charlie-and-the-Chocolate-factory
fun excursion and it makes God into someone who micromanages our life to such a
hair-splitting extent that every hiccup we experience is explained away by simplistic
and logic-defying answers. Underscore "explained away". When we wake up late (instead of sleeping late or
staying up to watch a match), it is because the heavens are engaging in a
cosmic epical battle between life and death. When our car doesn’t start
(instead of our neglect or via mechanical fault), it is because God foresaw an
accident due to a drunk driver. Why not
just turn the drunk driver into a sober one? And this goes with the
contaminated sandwich, the little blackout inconveniences and the phone
nuisance.
Maybe the moral of the story is that we should always
trust God and trust that all things will work out for the best in the end. So I should live it up a little, lighten up. But
to ascribe the occasional hiccups in our life to feel-good, make-believe
reasons as described in my friend’s post just makes a simpleton out of Christians and it also makes God into a cosmic
butler or genie who exists just to keep our sandwich warm, our roads perfectly safe,
our nights eternally bright and our sleep nocturnally sound. This is just not
the reality for millions of people in this world and they are inescapably
relevant because the God I serve is a God of universal and unconditional love. He
doesn’t just make my sandwich good for digestion and “cause” digestion
elsewhere that results in countless death. Or prevent my car from starting
because of a drunk driver so as to keep me safe and then “cause” daily
accidents with tragic results. Or strive to prevent a blackout for my exclusive
benefit and then “cause” blackouts in many countries where families suffer with
no end.
I am of course not attributing these causes to God (because
I really do not know most of the time) but I am definitely not attributing them
to those flimsiness of a reason just because my little complaining self and
life want to believe that they are so. I know God is looking out for me but his
looking out for me may just be the direct opposite of what I dreamily wish He
would do for me.
For all you know, it may just be a painful perseverance in
a trial. Or a suffering that strengthens me. Or a sin I am struggling
with that ends up in heart-wrenching repentance. Or a death, a rebellion and a
prodigal returns. Or a joy unexplained in the throes of the furnace of
character-reform. In my view, all that makes me a more resilient believer, a more
seasoned Christian and a wiser child of God. They will no doubt break me but in
breaking me, they make 1 Peter 1:6-7 come truly alive in my spirit if I
persevere in faith and hope:-
“In this you greatly rejoice,
though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of
trials. These have come so that your faith – of greater worth than gold, which
perishes even though refined by fire – may proved genuine and may result in
praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” Amen. Cheerz.
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