saints and monsters

I once heard a pastor talk about how much faith it takes to just believe in God, about how much science is out there that disproves there is a God. That we must have faith to face these lies and still believe. All though I understood where he was coming from, I'm not sure I believe that it takes much faith to believe in God. There have been many books written on how science proves the existence of an intelligent creator, people devote there life to this. Growing up I never found it hard to believe in God, even when I didn’t like him very much and it would have been much easier to just deny his existences, I never could. The fact that there was a God was as obvious as the fact that I had a mother. Believing in God was never a problem for me but believing that God cared for me took the majority of my life to just except to be true. It’s a very different thing to believe there is a God and believing that He loves you. For most of my life I could not imagine God even knowing my name never mind loving me enough to die for me, I guess I have also assumed I was grandfather into the whole salvation thing. That I was only able to see heaven not because of who I was or how much he loved but of what other people are and of how much he loved them. I could not understand why Christ would suffer on my behalf but I could see why he would for mother Teresa or guandi or Billy gram, I knew why he loved them how could you not love someone like mother Teresa and every thing she did. I never knew her but I think I would die so she would have the chance to save all the life’s she did. But why would God love me? If anything I’m not even a bug on the windshield of life, I’m three week old French fri under the passenger seat. This is just the way I thought, I built all these defenses around my self because of this way of thinking and with out knowing it this is the way I acted and treated most people. All this begin to change when I heard my brother say that God loves Hitler as mush as he loves Billy gram. I was very puzzled by this, how could God love that monster as much as he loved that saint, and if this is true where do I fit in with theses speakers of truth and killers of millions? Do I get a place in this? Or am I still sitting under the passenger seat waiting for the vacuum to suck me to oblivion? That night, the night I heard my brother say that I did something I had never dreamed I would ever do, something I had been terrified of. I ask God to show me he loved me, I ask that if what my brother said was true and if he really could love Hitler then he must be able to love me I need only introduce myself. As I laid down that night I remember thinking what if it’s true, what if god really does not care about me. When I woke up in the mourning I didn’t feel any more loved than I had the previous night. In fact nothing seemed to change I don’t know what I was expecting but I was still surprised when it look like I might get nothing. But that night I was reading on the beach and I watch the sun set, I remembered thinking that God must be an artist to paint something so beautiful. I ask myself why would God create something so beautiful I was soften that the beauty in heaven must be far greater than this so I don’t think he would do it for him self, then I heard something I have not heard since I was a child something that seemed to come from inside me, something I know now to be the voice of the holy spirit what I heard was him telling me that God painted this for me, that is why he put the stars in there place why he made the beach and the maintains too so you can see how much he loves you. You can see it in the beauty he gave you.
over the months that flowed I begin to believe what I heard that day, and not in a general since I begin to see it so very personally, that it was no longer about the ones who I thought deserved salvation but it was about me the one who didn’t, some how God stop being there savor and closet friend but he became my savor and closet friend. I don’t fully understand it myself all I know is that his love for me is bigger than any doubts I have in myself, and its stronger than any fear I may have of the darkness that lies inside of me, his love seems to drive it away seems to give me hope. What an amazingly disarming thing love can be, it can break the strongest and give the weakest confidence, and it can destroy or create. My prayer for you is the same as it was for me that night, that God would show that he loves you, that he would make it more obvious than you can stand, that just the hope of such a deep and profound love will drive you deeper towards, that it will take you home.