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Food for thought.

 A group of graduates, well established in their careers, were talking at a reunion and decided to go visit their old university professor, now retired. During their visit, the conversation turned to complaints about stress in their work and lives. Offering his guests hot chocolate, the professor went into the kitchen and returned with a large pot of hot chocolate and an assortment of cups - porcelain, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite - telling them to help themselves to the hot chocolate.

When they all had a cup of hot chocolate in hand, the professor said: 'Notice that all the nice looking; expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. The cup that you're drinking from adds nothing to the quality of the hot chocolate. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was hot chocolate, not the cup; but you consciously went for the best cups... and then you began eyeing each other's cups.

Now consider this: Life is the hot chocolate; your job, money, and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain life. The cup you have does not define, nor change the quality of life you have. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the hot chocolate God has provided us. God makes the hot chocolate, man chooses the cups.

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Gus Gnorski  is going to love this one...

GOD: Frank, you know all about gardens and nature.  What the world is going on down there on the planet?  What happened to the dandelions, violets, thistle and stuff I started eons ago?  I had a perfect no maintenance garden plan.  Those plants grow in any type  of soil, with stand drought and multiply with abandon.  The nectar from the long lasting blossoms attracts butterflies, honey bees and flocks of song birds.  I expected to see a vast garden of colors by now. But, all I see are these green rectangles.
 
St Francis:  It's the tribes that settled there, Lord.  The Suburbanites.  They started calling your flowers 'weeds'  and went to great lengths to kill them and replace  them with grass. 

 
God:  Grass?  But, it's so boring.  It's not colorful.  It doesn't attract butterflies, birds and bees; only grubs and sod worms.  It's sensitive to temperatures.  Do these Suburbanites really want all that grass growing there?  

St Francis:  Apparently so, Lord.  they go to great pains to grow it and keep it green.  They begin each spring by fertilizing grass and poisoning any other plant that crops up in the lawn.  

God:  The spring rains and warm weather probably make grass grow really fast.  That must make the Suburbanites happy.   

St Francis:   Apparently not, Lord.  As soon as it grows a little, they cut it-sometimes twice a week.  

God:  They cut it?  Do they then bail it like hay?  

St Francis: Not exactly, Lord. Most of them rake it up and put it in bags.  

God:  They bag it?  Why?   Is it a cash crop?   Do they sell it?  

St Francis:  No, Sir, just the opposite. They pay to throw it away.  

God: Now, let me get this straight. They fertilize grass so it will grow.  And, when it does grow, they cut it off and pay to throw it away?  

St Francis:  Yes, Sir.  

God:  These Suburbanites must be relieved in the summer when we cut back on the rain and turn up the heat.  That surely slows the growth and saves them a lot of work.  

St Francis:  You aren't going to believe this, Lord.   When the grass stops growing so fast, they drag out hoses and pay more money to water it so they can continue to mow it and pay to get rid of it.   

God:  What nonsense.  At least they kept some of the trees.  That was a sheer stroke of genius, if I do say so myself. The trees grow leaves in the spring to provide beauty and shade in the summer.  In the autumn, they fall to the ground and form a natural blanket to keep moisture in the soil and protect the trees and bushes.  It's a natural cycle of life.     

St Francis:  You better sit down, Lord.  The Suburbanites have drawn a new circle.  As soon as the leaves fall, they rake them into great piles and pay to have them hauled away.   

God:  No.  What do they do to protect the shrub and tree roots in the winter to keep the soil moist and loose?   

St  Francis:   After throwing away the leaves, they go out and buy something which they call mulch.  They haul it home and spread it around in place of the leaves.   

God:  And where do they get this mulch?  

St Francis:   They cut down trees and grind them up to make the mulch.  

God: Enough!  I don't want to think about this anymore. St Catherine, you're in charge of the arts.  What movie have you scheduled for us tonight?   

St Catherine'  'Dumb and Dumber' , Lord. It's a story about....  

God:  Never mind, I think I just heard the whole story from St Francis.

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I Believe There Is A God. 

     Even though the hardships that my wife and I have endured He has always carried us on His hands so we have made it through each day and we wake up the next morning on top of the ground instead of 6' under.  By no means am I some religious nut or some holy roller or however you may refer to people that cram religion down your throat.  I believe that religion is very personal to me but since this is a "Faith Blog" I can let you know my feelings on this topic.
     You will notice in my writings that I give Him honor and respect by capitalizing such words that refer to Him as He, Him, and God.
     Some may say that there is no God and that you make your own destiny, I say that you make your own destiny but God helps you through your chosen path.
     God means something different to a lot of people, to me He is a guiding light making sure I follow a path where I can say that I have achieved good in this world and a path where I know that what ever happens He is here to help me.  I also recognize that God is many things to many other people, some of which do not see eye to eye with what I think God is.
     God is not limited by my beliefs, or my religion. In fact, I may be completely wrong concerning my beliefs of Him - but, more likely, my beliefs are simply inaccurate and fall short of the truth. Even atheism is, in a strange way, a path to truth, and therefore a path to God. So is every faith that has ever existed on Earth.
     God is not limited by anything. God is a concept that has existed in every empire, every race, every creed, and every culture since the dawn of man. Although God changes from place to place and time-to-time, there has never been a time when He (or She, or It) did not enter the mind of man in some form.
     God is beyond my mental grasp. I cannot imagine Him, and neither can you. He is all of reality, and transcendent of reality. He is all of time, and beyond time. He is you, and I - and beyond us both. That is God to me.
     God is Jesus, and Mohammad, and Buddha, and the Great White Spirit. God shows himself in the Bible, the Torah, the Quran, the Vedas, and every work of man and every thing in nature. Nothing exists outside of God.
     I cannot possibly see God as He, in all his glory, actually is. (Whew!  Hope you understood what I just tried to say there!) It would be like trying to look at the universe, and all of time, and all possible times, all at once.
And yet ... as much as God is unfathomable, God is also unmistakable. We look at physics and see that the evidence shows that the universe must have started as a single point, a Big Bang. What caused that point, that singularity, to burst forth into matter and energy? We don't know. Logic - causality - dictates it didn't happen by itself, so ... what, then?
     We look at genetics. Mankind shares it's genome not just with apes of 5 million years ago, but with reptiles 50 million years ago. The same genes, the same receptors and insertions, used and reused since life began. Why? Did a molecule as complex and life-guiding as DNA happen by chance? Yes - but what other chance was there? None. Any good biochemist can tell you that.
     An intelligent scientist does not discard a hypothesis simply because there is no physical evidence to support it, as any theoretical physicist worth his term at Cambridge knows.  The choice is yours - but it does make the singularity, the promotion of DNA, quantum probability and a host of other quandaries much easier to handle.
     The all-pervading spirit, the One, the All, the Everything ... including me. Including you.
The challenge then is obviously not to understand God, since that must be forever beyond the grasp of conceptual mind, but to experience God. That had happened to people through all times as well. What this means to those who did can also not be understood by the conceptual mind. Experience is individual and personal.
     This blog was about my belief in God; this is not saying that don't believe that many churches are in it just for the money as a business because that is an entirly new discussion.  I was talking about my belief in God.  When I was younger, back in the days of Latin spoken Masses, I attended a Catholic church regularly.  There was a preist that told me that whenever I needed to talk with someone and nobody was around I could always talk to God.  He told me that it didn't make a bit of difference if I was walking down the street coming home from playing ball or sitting on the toliet at home.  I never forgot those words and as silly as it may sound that's when I do my best talking.  Because money and politics was spoken in the church so often and I could hear that junk on TV, or better yet just turn it off, I slowly started staying away from going to church.  I believe the way I want to believe but I believe in Him - The Almighty.
I know that I was a little long winded but that is what God is to me.