Why should God care what we believe?
One day my daughter asked me
a very good question. (Actually all questions about God are good
questions.) She asked why God cared whether we believed in God or
not.
Sometimes when I have read
the first commandment or even parts of the Old Testament where the
people have drifted away from worship and God gets angry, I have
pictured a very selfish and petulant but enormous three-year-old
looking down on us and saying, "What about me? Nobody is even paying
any attention to me!"
And since that is not the
picture of God I have ever painted for my daughter or for myself, both
of us had a little trouble with the question. I thought about it for
a few days and then I preached about it. That is what all of us
preachers do with good questions if we ever think we have even a
glimpse of the answer.
God wants us to believe
because God wants us to know how much we are loved. God sent God's
son for that very purpose. Jesus nailed to a cross is the only picture
God has ever sent us of who God is. That is the ultimate statement of
love for all of us.
The knowledge that the one
who created everything is in love with us -- that has the power to
change us.
We picture a pouting
three-year-old with the "What about me" attitude because that's
exactly what we too often do when we feel uncared for and unloved,
when we feel like no one is paying enough attention to us. And we
think the cure for "what about me" is more attention and more stuff,
and we get greedy. And we try to draw everything toward us.
But the real cure for "what
about me" is to know that we are profoundly loved. All the saints we
lift up for their selflessness, all the Mother Teresas of this world
have had that gift. And it has enabled them to be givers and lovers
in the truest sense.
When your children asks why
God cares, tell them it's because God loves them so much. Tell them
God wants them to know how much they are loved. That is better than
any lesson on giving and sharing. It will make generous hearts.
Lord, the message of your
love can change me and change the world. Change my heart and help me
to share that first and then everything else. Amen
Copyright (c)
2004, The Rev. Dana Reardon. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Email her at
mspastor@aol.com.
The Rev. Dana Reardon is pastor at St.
Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Warwick, RI. A lifelong Lutheran, she
came to ordained ministry after 21 years in nursing, mostly in pediatric
intensive care. She graduated from Lutheran Theological Seminary at
Philadelphia in 1998 and served 4 ½ years in Upstate New York before
becoming a New Englander. She is still trying to understand the
accent. While in the Upstate New York Synod she chaired the Stewardship
Team. That began her fascination with what makes stewards -- and more,
what makes for generosity.
She
has three amazing daughters: Pastor Reardon says much of what she knows of
life she learned from them.
