A Love Note to a Child of God,

Ever raise a teenager? Even when you believe you are a reasonable parent and you have kissed their wounds, listened to their sorrows, thrown them a 'frickin' bone',  they walk into the room, huffing and puffing.   As a parent, you can't help help but wonder, "What did I do?"

Turns out, we may be a bit like that.

Met. Anthony Bloom writes in one of his books on prayer that we can be like that. All day we don't want to talk to Him. "Hello" in the morning. "'Night, God" before we fall asleep, otherwise, "kiss off, God."

We expect God to show up when we are ready. He was present all day, waiting on us, but we put Him off, like a petulant teenager. When we are ready and He doesn't give us what we want, I think we sound like a teenager, like the status message a friend of mine stole and reposted tonight.  She is a sweet parent and I take this because she it is not hers originally: (George Carlin's, I believe)

 I have wondered why 'the crazy' got amped or the anger bats came out in our house. I have been been a barometer for adolescent emotions I couldn't understand or anticipate -- "Hey, Yo, where did that come from?"-- Tonight, I realized something as I read my beloved friend's post. We are all a bit like teenagers when it comes to God. We think He is just like us. We don't trust His love. In the same way, we didn't trust our parents. We reject the idea that that our parents, or our Creator, have a vast reserve of love and wisdom beyond us. I am speaking the majority of us who don't have criminal parents who beat, rape, molest and berate us.

I'm speaking to us who have parents who tried to raise us the best way they could.

God, of course, kicks butt compared to our parents. They still need Him, like we need Him. We may outgrow them, but that quote shows we don't outgrow a certain kind of childishness. We envision our Creator in our image. We believe ourselves to be his Creator. Silly kids. Didn't we kick our parents just one time and discover when flesh met flesh that they were not larger than life? So to is He.

We're still teens. We still worry folks are looking at our zippers, checking to see if what's down so they can mock us. We think everyone wants to jump us and we worry no one will love us as we are. It's cause we don't accept His love. We don't trust He loves us and we're gonna sock it right back-- give Him what He deserves. We aren't gonna love him as He is. Bummer, Man, cause when we don't love Him as He is, we can't accept how great we really are.

In short, we distrust Him. It's unfair. My daughter huffs and puffs at me all the time. She shows me with each inhalation, each exhalation, that she doesn't believe I love her. Bullhocky.  So this is the reply I posted to all who think God is a construct of human imagination:

"Which religion? My faith teaches that the Creator of Man, who like you, **************, is a loving parent overseeing his beautiful children. He guides them away from what will harm them, towards what makes each one of them a better version of herself, or himself. This Creator would want them all to come home, at the end of their days, and hang out with Him forever, to laugh, and sing, and dance, and love one another and Him. The Creator has all the love he needs and pours it out on his children, who are bankrupt in love, and he had all the money he needs, but he is sorrowful to see that when he shares it, some of those children steal all away for themselves, refusing to share."