Mar 26, 2017

 

Follower of Jesus (18)

Blessed are those who mourn,

For they will be comforted. (2)

         Matt. 5:4

Why does God permit humans to be born and live in dire straits?

Ok, we can kind of see that God would permit humanity’s inhumanity to other humans because of free will, but why are humans suffering from natural disasters, droughts that kill, and other natural causes? It would seem that a God who claims to love would see them suffering (mourning) from the disasters that nature spreads and either stop these killing and maiming disasters or change the outcome. The earthquakes that killed so many in Haiti are just one example. It has been like this for 70,000 years with humans, and millions of years for life in general. It seems strange that despite all the beauty and wonders that we see, all of life exists by feeding on another form of life.

This one single fact and thought has caused many to sadly arrive at the conclusion that there must not be a God, especially one as we claim, a God that is love, pure and simply only love. It is a fact of life that life feeds on life, and we humans are the top of the food chain, able to exist on almost any other form of life that we see, including insects, snakes, worms, etc.

Thus death becomes part of life. Whether it is caused by other creatures or caused by natural events, death will present itself to each of us sometime, and there is no escape to that event. But it seems so meaningless to be caught in a location where the only end result is death; why were we created by this so-called loving God in the first place, if all that will happen is that we will die in some meaningless event in the future? This is the future of a high percentage of all human births at this time of the evolutionary path.

While the statistics are improving, still a high percentage of births in much of the world has less than a 50% chance to reach adulthood. Death seems to hold supreme throughout history. How can these numbers call to a loving God and be seemingly ignored?

What we don’t see is the love that is given to each person during their lifetime, as brief as it may be. God is love; and God provides a measure of that infinite love to all. We may not understand the inner spirit of another from our vantage point of our age, things we have gathered in our journey, joys we have witnessed and been part of during our journey, and all we have experienced. Yet we do not know how God communicates love during another’s journey and we have not, from our dualistic viewpoint understood the love of the soul. Yes, all these mourn the what-if, but when death sweeps one away that is when we discover the meaning of love, without the veil that is between us on this side of death.

            When Jesus speaks of those who mourn, he is speaking of what we can know and feel before that great veil of death. Fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all; and death is that great wall beyond which we cannot see directly. Only Jesus broke that barrier bluntly, even though many ‘dear-death’ experiences have brushed the edges of that wall. Even Jesus had lost the comfort of his God: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).

As we have seen, mourning has many meanings from many angles. We will explore the mourning of aging, of which I can speak well!

Meditation

Oh Wisdom, I lay my fears in Your arms and on Your breast. I know I can curl up in Your lap for comfort, and you will give me comfort to banish that grey or even black cloud that looms before me. You have given me rest so many times in the past; and I have dried my tears of anguish many times while resting in You. I ask in gratitude to be sheltered in comfort, and I know that You will hold me fiercely in Your love for eternity

 

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