E-greeting from God (a letter to a friend)

I will never be able to prove to you that there is a God or that Jesus is who He says He is... I have reasons, strong reasons based on a lot of evidence, for what I believe, but they are reasons, not proof. It comes down to...a person chooses to believe. Belief opens a door and a real Person comes in. It is only with the presence of that Person that the "knowing" happens. And even then, at times I KNOW and at other times...I trust.

Here is how I arrive at "God". All I need to do is try to wrap my human mind around the very basics of "what is". I don't get a sense of "smallness" I get a sense of the utter impossibility of it all. Get quiet some time soon and close your eyes and just think about time. What is it? Why are we "in" it?

Imagine time going back....before your birth...stretching into the NEVERENDING past? Just how far back does it go? I want you to get a sense of how it is just as impossible for us to imagine that there WAS a "beginning to time" as that there was "no beginning to time". Try to wrap your mind around either possibility. And time future...going on into "infinity"....no end. You cannot imagine an end of time or NO end to time. There is something about the entire thing that doesn't make sense to us.
It gets worse. Close your eyes again and imagine space. Yes we now have some concept of the hugeness of it all...ridiculous hugeness? But...where does space end? Does it go on "forever"? Infinity is a word we throw around casually now but THINK about it. No end to space? That can't be imagined. On the other hand...what shall we say then? There are edges somewhere...walls? You have now reached the end of reality...this is it? But walls and edges imply something BEYOND the walls and edges. What? Nothing? What is nothing? And how far does it go? And is there time there?

Now simply realize that some "where" in the midst of this incomprehensible sea of space and time there just happens to be a speck called Earth and it is inhabited by an amazingly complex system of life...the birds in the air, the fish in the sea...kittens, penguins, giraffes, pea soup and beings called "you and me" walking around in highly sophisticated bodies using our supposedly highly sophisticated brains to comprehend the very basics of what IS...and feeling completely baffled.

But we do know that we exist...and we both agree and attest that there is something called LOVE...and that something about LOVE feels right...feels like HOME...warms that chill that we feel when our minds are roaming around the "edges" of time and space and feeling alone and lost and vaguely terrified.

LOVE is right...that is something our inner sensors just "know". I believe that LOVE is the origin of it all...holds it all together...and LOVE is the image in which we were created. That is why it feels like home... It is. While other creatures are sustained by this LOVE...we are the only ones made "in His image" which is why we have free will...and minds to try to reason and comprehend it all. We are the creatures MADE to have a relationship with the Source.

So...if you would ever come to a point of concluding with me that there must be a God and that He IS Love... IF you ever came to that point...still I know you would say to me... "Why Christianity instead of any of the other religions that speak of God? Why believe this ridiculous story about Jesus instead of equally ridiculous stories about men who are half elephant?"

Other religions aren't the same. There are a lot of variations but mainly they all boil down to stories about capricious gods and goddesses who do humanlike things that don't make a lot of sense... Or else you have rules and regulations that are supposed to please or appease a god or gods...or just rules that make life easier and more pleasant.

But when you come from a base idea of God being LOVE...Basically that He created reality with care and placed Mankind in it for one reason only...because He wanted to have a loving RELATIONSHIP with us...then Christianity is the only religion that makes any sense at all because...once you truly dig in until you really know the story and the person of Christ and understand what happened and why you come to realize that...Jesus Christ is God's LOVE LETTER to the world.

He is our way of KNOWING God in a way our minds CAN comprehend. Instead of empty confusion at the edges of time and space...He comes to us in a flesh and blood form...a simple man...loving, kind...accepting. Words that reveal the reconciling nature of God... He is constantly telling us not to fear...and that He wasn't sent into the world to condemn it...but to save it. Jesus is our way back HOME.

I'm going to try here to get you to feel a sense of the love God feels for us...and the WHY of Jesus Christ. What I want you to try to recall is an e-greeting you once sent me. I'll never forget it. It quoted that saying, "If you love something set it free. If it comes back to you it is yours...if it doesn't it was never meant to be". The card showed two sets of footprints together, but then one set runs away. The remaining footprints, after a moment, run off after the first footprints and catch up with them...and the card in effect said "Forget that!!! I LOVE YOU!!!!"

Jesus is, in effect, that card to us from God. Yes, in order to love us He had to set us free...or it would be meaningless and not a real relationship at all. So He had to make us with a free will that was capable of walking away. But Jesus IS those footprints running after us, saying "I LOVE YOU!!! And I'm not going to just let you walk away. I will never stop you...but I WILL follow you your entire life... I'm right here with you. I'm your Love Letter from God...and your ticket home."

Jesus is God's attempt to fix a broken love relationship. He will follow us all of our lives with His offer. Yes, God has set you free...allowed you to walk away. But He loves you too much to just shrug and say 'oh well'. So He comes to you in a human form and trudges along behind you. He lived a life on Earth so that we could "get to know" God... He died on Earth to buy our ticket home...and to PROVE once and for all how much God loves us... And now being "Spirit", Jesus can follow each and every one of us every day of our lives holding out that love letter...that offer...

When we accept that offer He stops following us around and makes a home in our hearts...where He gives us an internal source of comfort, peace and love that you have to experience for yourself to believe. We love each other from the outside in. HE loves us from the inside out and it feels right and we have a sense of joy and peace that we can't find anywhere else...the reason being...this is the relationship we were created for in the first place.

You don't have to be anyone special or a "type" to obtain it...just human and broken and selfish and empty and confused and screwed up like all of us... At some point you just make a conscious choice to believe Jesus is God's Love sent in human form...and ask Him to quit following you around and come in and have a relationship with you and show you who God is.
And He does. And He will. And then you WILL know the Truth...and the Truth will set you free. We've been given two gifts. First....the free will to walk away from God. Second...the freedom, in Christ, to run back into His arms voluntarily. This is LOVE and it rings true to me. Whether it comes in the form of an e-greeting from a friend...or a Jesus-greeting from God...it is just RIGHT. True love sets the loved one free...yes...but it cares enough to follow. You will never find that in ANY other "religion" on earth. This is because it isn't a religion. It's a Person...and He's right behind you.