where the sidewalk ends...we frolic in the grass

Do we judge God on human standards? Is it true at some point that you've read something in the Bible and thought, "now, that can't be right?" Or perhaps you've tried to mold God and His will into your own likings.-->"So God said this, but I feel like He probably was having a bad moment and meant this."...God doesn't have bad moments, nor does He have to mold to your likings or your standards. Let's be honest, if you could be in charge of how God is and what He does, this would be a pretty screwed up world. Not that I'm saying that anyone out there is absolutely horrid, but we make mistakes...think back on your life--likely even within the year 2010 alone--and identify one mistake, one moment where you did or said something that you should have done differently. Mistakes change whole situations, they change entire lives, and making errors is just not the business that God is in---it would mess up much more than our mistakes. How can we judge God on a rubric this world has created, when He himself has created the world?...it's like judging someone's intelligence by how good a pie that make tastes...yeah, it doesn't make sense.

Recently someone told me about some J.D. Salinger literature works named, "Franny" and "Zooey." Although I have not read the books and therefore can neither recommend nor not recommend them, from what I understand tehy are not religious in nature, but there is an interesting discussion about Christ in there--something that you might find interesting and that certainy peaked my interest. So here are a few quotes I give you to ponder...take them with a grain of salt.
-"Jesus knew--knew--that we're carrying the Kingdom of Heaven around with us, inside, where we're all too...stupid and sentimental and unimaginative to look? You have to be a son of God to know that kind of stuff."
-"When you don't see Jesus for exactly what he was, you miss the whole point of the Jesus prayer. If you don't understand Jesus, you can't understand his prayer--you don't get the prayer at all, you just get some kind of organized cant. Jesus was a supreme adept, by God, on a terribly important mission."

When we take a step back and let God be God...when we stop trying to change everything He said or explain away something that we disagree with..when we seek to be mirrors of His character and not our own, then we get the story and the situation, we begin to understand that this Christianity is more than just a ritual, God is more than some made up 'feel good' that we adapt to our lives as we see fit, and that man in his human nature could not have thought of something so good, complete, and holy. No, the Bible is not just a book of inspirational stories someone made up to try to convince us to live right. That's right, a donkey talked, a blind man recieved sight, lives were changed, etc. Why is it that we find it so hard to believe? At one point, it was ludacris to say the world was round. Why? Because man could not see that it was. Sometimes we get the same way with God. When we cannot see Him physically, when we cannot see the future ahead of us, when we cannot see why something had to happen or someone had to die...we throw up our hands and say, "it must not be true." That's what they said about this globe we call earth...but yet, try as they may to convince their minds and all around them that it was flat (a rational guess-no one had seen the world as a globe from afar, and it was better to err on the side of caution than to go off the side of the world, right? wrong.) Don't err on the side of caution in your faith and trust in God...if the belief that the world was flat had continued and the surrounding world been purposely avoided, millions of possiblities would never have come to pass. Don't miss the possibilities in your life...especially the possibility of salvation in Christ, of a personal relationship with Him, a promise of eternity in Heaven, and forgiveness of the sinful nature we are all stricken with (Romans 10:13). Let God be God and stop trying to make it "Bob's God" or "Brittany's God" etc...skip the feel good and seek wisdom. It's not easy giving up what you have for what you more have to gain sometimes--especially when the road there is a challenging one, but know I have faith in you and what God can do through you (Philippians 4:13).