Wednesday, May 03, 2006

haggard love

i think about our relationship with god and others a lot.
how can god care about billions of people and not see them as billions of people? i look at grass and have such difficulty focusing on just one let alone a few or some. even as i get closer it almost becomes more frustrating to try and do so. yet i believe that god cares for me. the individual me. i don't know how, i don't always understand why, but i believe god does. if i didn't believe that, i couldn't keep my faith that helps me to love others. when i believe god loves and cares for christy that helps me to transform my thinking and actions towards her (i have been snappy, cranky, and selfish lately, having a hard time vocalizing, at least appropriately, what is bothering me)when i believe that god loves and cares for my neighbors and their neighbors and their neighbors and their neighbor, who happens to be merle haggard, i can believe that i can also. they all have names, they all have parts of them that still identify themselves with god, somehow, if they pay attention. i have to believe god loves merle, because god knows merle, not just the famous country artist, the merle that is merle when no one else is around. it's mysterious and incomprehensible to us, because we base so much of what we do on earning. merle, to us,is merle because of what he accomplished. he has value based on his notoriety. merle is merle to god because he was born, he has value to god based on being. merle's value is equal to that of the homeless person, the politician, the religious person, the dalit in india, the tibetan monk, the drug czar in columbia, the oppressed woman in africa, the homosexual prostitute. he has the same value in god's eyes as adolph hitler had and as mother teresa had. unfortunately, for whatever reason, people respond to that love differently or not at all and do harm to themselves and others.
why?
why chose pain and fear over love?

2 comments:

Eric said...

Brett, what do you mean when you say, " they all have parts of them that still identify themselves with god, somehow, if they pay attention."?
Not sure what you are saying here. Can you clarify?
EO

brett said...

hey eric,
thanks for the question.
i believe because all people were created in the image of god, that everyone has the ability to see god in their lives, others lives and in the "natural" world. i believe everyone longs for god. some choose to ignore that longing, some try to pursue the longing in different ways. i also believe that god created everything as good and, although there is much evil, that the goodness of god is recognizable and, even to the most corrupt, desirable to all.