May 30, 2016

 

God is Love (23)

                   1 John 4:8

Love always trusts (2)

                                     1 Corinthians 13

Now let us look at the other side of that two-way street of trust: Does God Trust us? And if God does trust us, I will ask the other question: Why does God trust us. We have done very little to earn the trust of God. look at our history. The vast majority of the history of the world has seemingly been one filled with pain and misery, with one human being inflicting pain on another.

But, you see, God is Love; and Love trusts. The results may not be today or even tomorrow, but God Trusts, and it will occur, given sufficient time. And we must remember: in the eyes of God, we are but a youngster, still learning to be a sentient being, still fumbling with our growth spurts, still waiting for our evolutionary cycle to reach the adult level.

But is the true story of humanity only one of depravity, grief, and violence? Our historians seem to see what they call “The Big Picture”, dwelling on what Lord or King ruled what land and when, stressing the conflicts that seem to be a constant mark of the path of humanity.

But God is Love, and Love Trusts.

Historians seldom spent any time dwelling on the lives of the individual person. In fact, it was very hard to understand what the individual person did, or especially felt, during any time in history. The ordinary person lived a quiet life, usually trying to raise their family, put food on the table, and survive.

Billions upon billions of people dwelt on this small blue ball over the 70,000 years after true humanity appeared. It is truly challenging to understand how anyone feels about their lives even today, considering all the various lives at so many different levels of what we would call poverty to luxury. Yet when we study any culture, we are constantly surprised. Children are born. Pictures of children world-wide show smiling children, apparently able to find happiness even under the grimmest of situations. Marriages occur, showing love still blossoms in all societies, again children are born, and the cycle repeats. I suspect that if could find ourselves in any society in the past, from the hunter-gather to agricultural societies of the past 9000 years, we would find smiles, joy in the strangest places, love showing up in what we would consider appalling situations, and people somehow finding ways to cope with almost any situations, even finding joy and some level of happiness anyplace.

God is Love, and Love Trusts.

Read the accounts of the holocaust survivors, and you will find smiles mentioned, hope where there was no hope, remembrances of love, and other signs of hope and joy, for without some level of lifting the soul out of the grime, one could not survive. The stories are uplifting, for they show the true nature of humanity: we find ways to move beyond the present situations, at least in our dreams, to reach levels beyond expression or having any reflection of reality as we know it today.

Looking at the early Native American life style, we can begin to image what life was like in the hunter-gather stage or the early agricultural stage: life was considered good, and there are many persons still living that life by choice, because they find that style has very little of the stress and pains that accompany the life of what we consider the “modern human”.

So God has reason to trust humanity. Perhaps not to trust the way we operate in groups of what we call nations today, but on the individual life, for most of the 7+ billion who live on our planet find some level of happiness, no matter what the level of existence they find themselves immersed.

Our religions speak of a time in the future when “The lion will lie down with the lamb”, and all will be well. In Christianity it is claimed that will occur with “The Second Coming”, meaning that the world will be remade from the outside to become peaceful. But this approach has all kinds of negatives about it, from removing the free will of humanity that we prize so much, to forcing a single concept of peace, to a “You will love it or else” mentality, to the tossing all responsibility for a peaceful existence off from ourselves and foisting it on the “God” who will say “You will like this, or else”.

But what if the “Second Coming’ is not a single flash of an event, but a slow maturing of humanity that eventually arrives, kicking and screaming, to a point that we have to have peace if we are to survive, then to seeing that peace is a pretty nice thing, so that we will voluntarily choose peace simply because it causes less pain.

You see, God is Love, and Love Trusts.

Humanity will arrive at the peaceful mien, sometime, and God has no timetable and is in no hurry, to reach the level of responding to the Love of God, and be able to accept the Trust of God, as the end way of a life well lived.

Will it happen tomorrow? Probably not. It may well take much more time, but signs are starting to appear here and there. Hundreds of thousands if not millions, are starting to respond in a manner that we can catch further glimpses of the possibilities that lie ahead. God Trusts us, and we will respond.

Some day.

When they call to me,

I will answer them;

When they are in trouble;

I will be with them.

I will rescue them and honor them.

                                 Psalm 91: 15 (GNT)

Meditation

My protector and my guide, I place my whole being into Your care, for You will only protect me and keep me safe from harm. Your Love always surrounds me, for my life is a constant blessing from the Spirit of the universe, that source of life that is my very being. I have trusted You to only give me the best, and I have not been disappointed, as Love has blessed my life all my days. I marvel at, and am grateful for, the trust You have placed in me, giving me the freedom to explore and see the wonders of the world, those in the shadow as well as those in the Light. I continue to be delighted in the joys that fill my life, as Your Love fills in my days and they shine with the wonder of all.

Thank You.

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