Saturday, June 2, 2012

Good Samaritan

The most familiar story in the New Testament is about an alienated man doing an extraordinary act of compassion.  Jesus concluded the story with a question about being a good neighbor. My ending is different: when the injured man asks the Samaritan why he did this act of mercy, the Samaritan said "I did it so that God might exist."

What the Samaritan did was to transform God from being a distant idea to being a present fact.  In that act, the divine dream becomes a reality.  The unimaginable turns out to be real.

When we love, God becomes tangible.  That is true when we forgive. . . when we work for justice or peace or healing.  It is as though God is waiting for us to let Him/Her loose in our lives. 

That old question that asks "do believe in the existence of God?" cannot be answered with YES or NO.  It can only be answered by enabling your conception of God to act.

Through the ages, theologians have speculated noisily about the nature of God.  That continuing debate provides stimulating discussion.  Bit if we really mean it when we pray "thy will be done", we are responsible for bringing God's will Into existence. Apart from that action, God  is but a concept.

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