Hello God, It's Me Jessica

I don’t care what people say about this: God is my Father and I am his Daughter. Last night I was lost and running low on gas driving around an unfamiliar area. You know what thought where running through my mind in those moments? Well besides the Please let there be a gas station, please let there be a gas station, there was this: God your daughter is lost and she’s trying to find her way home. I know if my dad knew I was lost he’d try to help me out, but he can’t help me. But you’re here with me. Can you help? I don’t know if it was necessarily God that helped me find the gas station –that’s not the point- the point is He’s someone we turn to because we Know He’ll always be there. God is love. We carry Him within Us.

So what’s God been up to these days?

Here’s what I think:

When God first made man He saw him struggling. Man was lost in the desert and being enslaved by his own brothers. God had hoped man would find his own way back to Him, but things weren’t going so well in that department. God then tried to connect with man directly through various chosen people. Unfortunately it was like a game of telephone where His Words were being misinterpreted, forgotten, and twisted. He had people like Moses try to express the main points clearly, but even those managed to confuse people- if they chose to notice them at all. And Judaism was becoming overly defined and ritualistic. They were not getting that direct connection God wanted them to have. Spirituality cannot flourish when too much emphasis is placed on rules and restrictions.

Meanwhile, over in the Eastern-Hemisphere, Hinduism was having issues of its own. God’s people kept dividing themselves: wealthy=good, poor=evil. It was saddening. So he sent down another light to show people the way from darkness –just as he had with Abraham and Moses. This new light was called Buddha. Buddha drew from the foundations of Hinduism, but altered it to remove its imperfections. Through this he showed people they way to serenity and bliss.

Meanwhile, back in the Western-Hemisphere, there were still issues among God’s people. If you want something done right- you have to do it yourself. Hence Jesus. The connection God made through man through the life of Christ was so profound that people 2000 years later can still find God just by reading about Jesus.

After Mercy, Forgiveness, and Unity were shown to be the highest values of human nature –instead of pre-assumed weaknesses- God thought things for man would be better. Humanity tinkered along for a while… but then, sure enough, the Dark Ages came around. Corruption in Catholicism by the educated spiritual leaders manipulating unaware laymen, crusades to enslave and destroy indigenous cultures under God’s flag, inquisitions to torture mutilate the innocent –Man had lost sight of God in favor of his own reflection. People had become self-centered and distracted by their own societal class, religion, and money. Many suffered.

So where did God stand with the whole Black Plague incident? Was he punishing people- or was that just Mother Nature? Normally I say God has nothing to do with natural disasters. God is Light. Light does not punish or kill innocent people. God suffers with his people. The earth is a living, breathing, entity all its own. The earth gets sick just like people get colds –especially when diseases like pollution and deforestation are wreaking havoc on its system. But what about the plague? Lessons learned from the plague include: (1) Too many people living together in unhealthy conditions leads to mass spreading of diseases. (2) Diseases don’t discriminate. The wealthy tried to flee from it, but it found them just the same. Diseases are everybody’s problem.

You can say we learn similar things from some natural disasters like Hurricane Katrina (when people fail to act because they choose to be bystanders waiting for the government or someone else to save the day- people die) or Japan’s Earthquake/Tsunami (people on the coast need to be better prepared for coastal-related environmental disasters –including not placing nuclear power plants in those types of areas). But ultimately natural disasters devastate people’s lives and also bring people formerly separated on the globe closer together by reminding them of the fragility of humanity through and our vulnerability to our Mother’s Nature.

I don’t know if God had anything to do with the Black Plague. I do know the evils man commits with his own hands are by his self alone, against God and all that He stands for –though some men may still claim He approves.

For these reasons I believe God became more distant to man. My sister thinks it’s because man struggled less and less thanks to his Divine ingenuity and god was not needed to save the day as much. But can you imagine having two sons you love, raise, and watch over then suddenly turn against each other and you have to witness helplessly as one son slays the other with knife because they got into an argument over something trivial? Can you imagine your children enslaving, beating, torturing, bombing, shooting, and massacring hundreds of thousands of millions of their own siblings year, after century, after millennia?

Still, God sends down lights when He can to lead people out of the darkness –Abraham Lincoln, Martin Luther King Jr., Mother Teresa, Gandhi, Harvey Milk…all our great and admiral leaders. They all spoke God’s Word consistently: We are all One. We belong Together, Not Divided.

God Exists. He doesn’t reach out to us as much, though He tries to help us when he can. Unlike centuries before, man’s plight now has nothing to do with limited access to resources. Thanks to technology we can easily sustain ourselves and the environment. But people still suffer. It’s their own fault. They put things like money and power before Humanity and God. Self-Interest and Self-Gain has divided man from seeing His True Self.