Pondering God

Life itself is such a miracle! And having a life here, being a part of this great planet is such a privilege! The beauty, the interconnec-tedness of all species, the incredible variety of plants and animals, rocks and minerals! What a gift life is! And what a God who created it all!

Can you even conceive of God who created our world, the Earth, and the whole universe as well? My small brain can’t wrap itself around the totality of who God is. He is mystery. I can see that the Mind of God must exist in planning this whole universe—the incredible number of species on this planet alone—scientists postulate some 8,000,000 species here of which we know about 1 million. But it is not just the number of species that is astounding, it is the profound interconnection of all those species, each providing the other food or habitat or other needs in a perfect whole. The lion does not decimate the antelope herds, he culls the old and the young, the weak and makes the herd stronger. The beetles of this world—and they are legion– are the transformers of old, dead life into something usable, maybe the composters of the world.

Here’s how I get to the enormity of God’s creation which may now extend to multiple universes, according to the cosmologists, entered through black holes. I like to look at the variety of species on earth to see how God likes a multitude of similar creatures and plants.

Birds                      10,425 species

Reptiles           10,038

Fish                32,900

Mollusks          85,000

Corals             2,175

 

Mushrooms      31,496

Mosses           16,236

Algae              13,513

Lichen             17,000[1]

 

And here is more: I’ve read that there are 350,000 species of beetles, 150,000 species of flies, 20,000 species of orchids and more. These numbers boggle my mind and are awesome to me. They say so much about the mind of God and how he likes variety in all things.

And there is more about God: he created the species of mankind who was given free will, the ability to choose his relationship with the Lord(or not). We are not forced into this relationship, although it seems that many crises and challenges would point us in the right direction, that is, towards God. But it has to be our choice. If our God was a human invention, I could see how we might be forced to comply or to obey, but that is not God’s way.

This is one of the most amazing things about God– his desire for an intimate relationship with all us humans. He wants to be connected to us, to show he cares, to accompany us through life, if only we will welcome him into our lives.

Another surprise is that he offers earth’s bounty equally to us all. He doesn’t withhold from anyone what he offers to us all. He has, however, set a system that rewards the people who obey his will and punishes those who don’t. His punishment is not “hell-fire-and-damnation.” It’s more that the choices we make in our lives have built in consequences that either bring us fulfillment and peace and love or insecurity and unhappiness.

The choices we make to put our needs ahead of anyone else’s lead to paranoia and a more desperate grasping at more and more money and stuff to meet our needs, which, in turn, cause us even more insecurity and grasping. There is no possibility in our ego-centered choices for happiness, for joy, for peace and love, because we’re so trapped on the treadmill of our culture, for example, that says there is never enough of anything to meet our needs.

On the other hand, the more we latch onto our longing for God and pursue a deeper and deeper relationship with him, the more we include others in fulfilling our needs and theirs, the happier, more fulfilled we become. The more he heals us of all those worldly anxieties and fears, the more we can relax and just be who we were created to be. “Stuff” and “more stuff” just don’t have a hold on us any more.

In pursuing the relationship with God we are working at a deeper level of needs than the surface/ego ones. As we allow God more and more purchase in our lives, as we trust God to meet our physical needs like food, shelter and clothing, we find that our spiritual needs, the need for passion in our lives, the desire for connectedness and the engagement of our minds are all being filled by our ever deepening relationship with God and what he gives to us. Beyond our material needs we find that we care less and less about the material world every year.

I hope that I’ve been able to scope out some of what we know about our God. I know that I have failed in large part, because beyond anything else God is mystery, unknowable and far too immense for our human brains to grasp. It’s important that we are able to live with that mystery and not try to define God exactly. In doing that we are not only doing the impossible, but we are limiting what God can do in our lives and in others’ lives. I always return to a simple proposition: that we let God tell us who he is, not any other human being.

And, yes, we remember that God, this infinite being, also wants an intimate relationship with each of us. And that is part of the mystery: how he can be so unknown and yet so knowable.

 

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Questions to ponder over the week: How knowable is God to me? Do I have a personal, intimate relationship with God? If I don’t, what would be the first step I need to take? Have I told God all I need to say to him? About my anger at him? My fears about myself and life itself? About what stands between him and me?

 

Blessing for the week: May we be the people of God who embrace him for all the mystery and the discoverable that he is. May we be the people of God who see what stands between us and God and who work to eliminate all the “gods.” May we rest in the arms of God, secure and safe, not threatened by anything.

 

 

 

My book, “Thy Kingdom Come!” is up on Amazon in paperback and Kindle versions. Check it out under my full name, Patricia Said Adams or Patricia Adams, if you’re interested. If you’ve already read it, I would love for you to post a rating or comment on Amazon or Good Reads—the ratings bring in readers.

See the 4 videos posted on the FB page for By the Waters about the kingdom. They are meant to complement the book.

I’m also on YouTube at By the Waters with Pat Adams or on Twitter at BTWwithPatAdams.

 

[1] http://www.currentresults.com/Environment-Facts/Plants-Animals/number-species.php 11.10.15