Why is life so hard, then, if God is good? A quote from the movie A League of Their Own: “If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.” Also, things for the most part don’t seem to be altogether arbitrarily hard — if you’re smart about it, at least. For things that require craft, the technique of years’ experience tend to produce things that show the care used in creating them. And so it would be with life: one where everything comes by just snapping one’s fingers, however much material treasure is accumulated, this is just not the same as when things are earned through the work. Not to throw away the conveniences, but not to stop with what comes easy; an easier life is to raise the bar higher at what you must achieve. For a life not well lived is bereft of its meaning. The meaning of life is how much you’ve loved living it. An easy life is easily a throwaway existence — and love is all the things you keep.

Before the last set of visions I had, I always seemed to come down from the heavenly heights, and all I needed to do to explain things was to say that it was just a trip, just your brain imbalanced of its chemicals, rational explanations. But then there was this last time, and I know from that one, I’m never coming down. For example, I’d always been able before to discern the hallucination from the reality, but they went over the top this last time. On Mac OS X, in the upper right corner is a magnifying glass which, if clicked, accesses Spotlight, to search. I tried that and that didn’t happen. Instead, Dictionary popped up on the screen. And the angels let me know that they were responsible for it. I tried it a bunch of times. Then I bring up a directory listing window and I had it sort by name, and that was the most messed up alphabetical order I’ve ever seen! Yeah, I know what I saw. It made me question just where I was, astral-plane-wise. Or if I was even still alive.

Music we’ve covered, but then there’s mathematics. Physics, more precisely. Doesn’t anyone find it a bit convenient that there are equations that can predict how things will behave in reality? It has made some people think that God is a mathematician at heart, though I believe differently on that matter. But how eerie is it that Newton’s laws of gravitation so closely match how things behave, but then Einstein comes along, and we have an even more precise description of how things must happen? The greatest gift to knowledge of the twentieth century is the sense of uncertainty — just before it, the Enlightenment had everyone thinking we’d figured it all out, just some trivial details remained to be found. How wrong we were. But the universe seems to be profoundly weirder than we ever before believed it could be. And yet, we can make sense of it. You don’t find that at all peculiar?

So how are we to read the Bible, if we cannot count on it being in totality free of errors? It is an insane philosophy to be of the sort that takes every word of it to be literally true. There is reason upon reason to believe that the world is billions of years old, and was not created in six twenty-four hour days. That Adam and Eve were not the parents of us all. I will go no further in this vein, for if you cannot have faith except with the crutch of blind faith to the Word, there is nothing I can say that will make you leave your crutch behind, and stand, and walk on your own. We must look upon the Bible as what is now known of it: not everyone said what the Book says they said, nor did they all do what they are said to have done, and not all things happened like it said they happened. Is there a simple formula to discover which is true, and which needs a more reasoned approach? That is the exercise left to the reader, the one of true faith.

When it comes right down to it, when the Holy Spirit asks something of you, is it yes, or no? Even easier, when we are unencumbered by the weight of the world, when it is purely choice, do we say yes to Him, or do we say no? For the offense that we will not ever be forgiven for, what is termed blasphemy to the Spirit of truth, is simply that: to say no. Not to worry, because God understands if somehow we cannot sometimes abide by the rule of love: these would be the encumberances I mentioned. You are forgiven, if you are still true. And it is well taken by God when you do have the weight of the world pressing against you, and you still say yes (thus saints are made). Sometimes to say yes and it translates wrong. To rather say no to ourselves, than to love.

There is no truth in power, nor is there truth in money. The wise man will see both of these as necessary evils used to get things done in the world, and thinks it is better if possible to get things done without having to deal with either. With power, one may believe that he can make truth by his own word or action; of course, this is an illusion. And he may find that reality will twist only so far before it snaps. With money, one may think he can buy truth, but as you cannot buy love, so it is so with truth: he may find that he only buys the hollow forms that resemble what things of truth genuinely are. What power and money do get you, at the very best, is comfort. This is not an illusion. But those who have one or both is likely not going to be satisfied with so meager a prize, not when the world makes so big a production on how great these things are.

There are people who do nothing but complain. What do we teach our children? The children will not appreciate that they have a roof over their heads, three square meals, a place to sleep, clothes enough for every day of the week. Would not those who complain be likened to the child who takes such things for granted? Are you not thankful for the ground under your feet, the air you breathe, water to drink, an entire civilization that supports your existence? Could it be the person who does not believe in God who is the creator the same as one who takes the beauty and the utility of things for granted, and perhaps thinks only to complain for what is not right, instead? Even if he doesn’t complain, he takes such things without thanks, most probably. And if he does not do that, but is truly grateful for all that is, for his very life: to him I say, you are not far from the Kingdom. For he has God already, but just doesn’t know it.