Category: God

Children’s Letters to God

Dear God:

My Mommy is sad a lot since Daddy went away. We can’t find him. Can you?

Dear God:

My turtle died. We buried her in our yard. Is she there with your now? If so, she really likes lettuce.

Dear God:

I have scary dreams at night. Mommy says I can’t come in with them anymore ‘cuz I’m too big for that. Where do scary dreams come from, or should I ask the devil that?

Dear God:

Did you invent skateboards? Do you have them up in Heaven too? I love mine a lot and can do lots of tricks already. Do you like watching me?

Dear God:

I’m sorry I forgot the words to your songs yesterday in Sunday School. I don’t sing that good anyway so sometimes I just hum along. Is that o.k. with you?

Dear God:

Could you please make my legs be strong? I want to play like the other kids. They tease me so please make them stop.

Dear God:

Do you throw the lightening down at us? It scares me a lot when it goes BOOM. Please stop it.

Dear God:

I love Jesse a lot. When I told him, he pushed me down and made me cry. Mommy says he must like me too. What do you think?

Dear God:

Molly got new pink shoes, and I want them. Is that bad? I won’t steal them or anything, but would you send me some too?

Dear God:

I hate it when Daddy drinks his beer. He smells awful. Then he sleeps. He gets mean and yells at me a lot. Did you make up beer? Why?

Dear God:

When I get big I want to play basketball. Maybe you could make my skin black so I can play better. Also, make me really tall, too.

Dear God:

Do you like it when I pray to you? I do, too.

Dear God:

My Sunday School teacher says you always love me. Is that true? Even after what I did to Sara yesterday – or do you know about that? I really am sorry so I wish you would still love me.

Dear God:

My grandma is dying. She says you want her back with you, but I want her to stay here with me. You can have anyone you want. She’s all I have, so please let her get better and stay.

Dear God:

Did baby Jesus cry all the time? My new brother does, and I don’t like it. Mommy says all babies do, and I did when I was little. I’m six now. I don’t think baby Jesus ever cried. He’s your son, so you must know the answer. We have a bet on it, so please write back.

Dear God:

Why did you make snakes and spiders? I’m afraid of them.

Dear God:

Could you send me a horse? Caitlan has one, and she’s always bragging about how fun he is. I want a bigger and smarter horse than hers. My horses’ name will be Bullet so make him the fastest too, please.

Dear God:

My teacher is mean. She always yells at us. She’s old and ugly. Why did you make bad and mean people?

Dear God:

Help me to not wet my bed anymore. I keep getting whippings, but I still can’t stop.

Dear God:

Why do old people smell funny?

Dear God:

I saw a kangaroo and a buffalo today at the zoo. I like the lion best. What is your favorite? I think the ostrich is funny looking – did you do that on purpose?

Dear God:

I don’t like brussel sprouts. Do I still have to eat them? I don’t like milk, either. Mostly I like pizza.

Dear God:

I love you, God.

Dear God:

Would you make me a little brother? I want to have someone to boss around like my brother does me.

Dear God:

Why didn’t you make me special? Cloe is specially pretty and Janine is specially smart. Ryan can run faster than anyone and wins all the races. Tina has perfect teeth. And Carmen can speak two languages. Did you forget to give me something special to be?

Dear God:

My dog, Bowser is getting really old now. He gets up slowly and doesn’t keep up with me anymore when we run. Mommy says he’s going to die one day. Could you just make him a puppy again instead?

Dear God:

I have no best friend. Everyone at school seems to have a best friend but me. Could you send me one, please? And hurry.

Dear God:

I have a spelling test on Tuesday. I never get all the words right. Maybe you could help me this time. Or is that cheating?

Dear God:

I have a lizard named Ernie. He only has three feet ‘cuz one of them got caught in the door. I didn’t mean to do it though. Would you fix it back again?

Dear God:

In Sunday School we learned that You are everywhere. How big are You? As big as Shaq? He plays basketball and is the biggest I’ve ever seen.

Dear God:

Do you know when I’m bad or good? Or is that just Santa Claus?

Dear God:

I play worse than anyone on my soccer team. I’m the smallest one, too. That doesn’t seem very fair. Did you play a dirty trick on me?

Dear God:

Please make me pretty. Because I think I’m not very smart.

Dear God:

Do you listen to my prayers every night? Do you really know when I only pretend to brush my teeth? Don’t tell Mommy, O.K.?

 

http://www.childrensletterstogod.com/Home.html

Thoughts on the Mercy of God

A Liturgical Christian’s Understanding of Mercy

Bryan’s note: As I travel the internet I occasionally find something out of the ordinary.  Something that stands out and blesses me.  The following text is a wonderfully precise definition and application of God’s mercy.  I hope it blesses you the way it blessed me.

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Many people remember the Russian couple, the Rosenbergs, who were tried in court for treason against the United States. The trial was a long and bitter one. As the final sentence was pronounced, the lawyer for the Rosenbergs cried out, “Your Honor, what my clients ask for is justice!”

Judge Kaufman replied, “What the court has given them is what they ask,  justice! What they really want is mercy. But mercy is something this court has no right to give them.”

The One who has the right to give mercy is God.

The Theme of God’s Mercy

This is brought out in the Gospel reading of the Pharisee and the Publican. “God, be merciful to me the sinner,” prayed the Publican. His only plea was for mercy, Kyrie Eleison!  Without this prayer Christianity would be a philosophy, a history, a code but not a religion that saves.

The same theme of God’s mercy is expressed again in the Gospel lesson of the Prodigal Son. Listen to the words of the following hymn from the vesper service of the Prodigal Son:

“As the Prodigal Son I come to you, merciful God. I have wasted my whole life in a foreign land; I have scattered the wealth which You gave me, O Father.

“Receive me in repentance, O God, and have mercy upon me.”

One of the most beautiful examples of God’s mercy is the prodigal son, who leaves home, wastes all his father’s resources in sin, ends up living with pigs, remembers his father, repents, and returns home where he is embraced by the waiting father, who declares a feast to celebrate his return. That is God’s mercy.

The same theme of mercy is emphasized again in the Gospel reading which deals with the second coming of Christ. Listen to the words of the following hymn from the Orthros:

“Have mercy, O Lord, have mercy upon me. I cry to you, when you come with your angels to give to every person due return for his/her deeds.”

From the Matins’ Services of Lent
 After the Gospel reading at matins on each Sunday during Lent, we hear the following beautiful hymns of repentance:

“Open to me the doors of repentance, O Life-Giver …But in your compassion purify me by the loving kindness of your mercy.

“When I think of the many evil things I have done, wretch that I am, I tremble at the fearful day of judgment, but trusting in Your loving-kindness, like David I cry out to You. Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy.”

These hymns are preceded by the reading of Psalm 51, one of the most used psalms in Orthodox worship services. In this Psalm, David asks God’s mercy for his sins and proclaims that God’s steadfast love and mercy are greater than the sins of His creatures:

“Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy steadfast love. According to Thy abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin” (Ps. 51.1-2) .

From the Penitential Canon of St. Andrew of Crete
 Another place where the call to God for mercy is heard during the first week of Lent is in the penitential canon of St. Andrew of Crete sung each evening during compline. Listen to some of the hymns:

“I have sinned, Lord, I have sinned against you.
Be merciful to me though there is no one whose sins I have not surpassed.
I cry to You, O Lord: Have mercy, have mercy on me!
When You come with Your angels to give due reward to each person for his deeds.

“I have sinned as no other person before,
I have transgressed more than any other, O Lord.
Before the Day of Judgment comes be merciful to me, O Lover of Man.

“Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!”

David once showed us the image of true repentance in a psalm he wrote exposing all that he had done:

“Be merciful to me and cleanse me!” he wrote,

“For against You only have I sinned, the God of our fathers.
Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!
I have distorted Your image, O Savior, and broken Your commandments.
The beauty of my soul has been spoiled, and its light extinguished by my sins.” in David’s words, “Restore to me the joy of Your salvation.”

“But have pity on me and,”

“Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!
Return! Return! Uncover what is hidden!”

“Say to God who knows all things:
‘You are my only Savior and know my terrible secrets.’
Yet in David’s words I cry to You:
‘Be merciful to me, O God, according to Your steadfast love.'”

“Have mercy on me, O God, have mercy on me!”

http://www.goarch.org/ourfaith/ourfaith7124

C.S. Lewis takes on the Incarnation

 
The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation.  They say that God became Man.  Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this. . . .
 
“In the Christian story God descends to re-ascend. He comes down; down from the heights of absolute being into time and space, down into humanity . . . down to the very roots and sea-bed of the Nature He has created.
 
But He goes down to come up again and bring the ruined world up with Him. One has the picture of a strong man stooping lower and lower to get himself underneath some great complicated burden. He must stoop in order to lift, he must almost disappear under the load before he incredibly straightens his back and marches off with the whole mass swaying on his shoulders.
 
Or one may think of a diver, first reducing himself to nakedness, then glancing in mid-air, then gone with a splash, vanished, rushing down through green and warm water into black and cold water, down through increasing pressure into the death-like region of ooze and slime and old decay; then up again, back to colour and light, his lungs almost bursting, till suddenly he breaks surface again, holding in his hand the dripping, precious thing that he went down to recover. He and it are both coloured now that they have come up into the light: down below, where it lay colourless in the dark, he lost his colour, too.
 
In this descent and re-ascent everyone will recognise a familiar pattern: a thing written all over the world. It is the pattern of all vegetable life. It must belittle itself into something hard, small and deathlike, it must fall into the ground: thence the new life re-ascends.
 
It is the pattern of all animal generation too. There is descent from the full and perfect organisms into the spermatozoon and ovum, and in the dark womb a life at first inferior in kind to that of the species which is being reproduced: then the slow ascent to the perfect embryo, to the living, conscious baby, and finally to the adult.
 
So it is also in our moral and emotional life. The first innocent and spontaneous desires have to submit to the deathlike process of control or total denial: but from that there is a re-ascent to fully formed character in which the strength of the original material all operates but in a new way. Death and Rebirth–go down to go up–it is a key principle. Through this bottleneck, this belittlement, the highroad nearly always lies.
 
The doctrine of the Incarnation, if accepted, puts this principle even more emphatically at the centre.  The pattern is there in Nature because it was first there in God.  All the instances of it which I have mentioned turn out to be but transpositions of the Divine theme into a minor key.  I am not now referring simply to the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ.  The total pattern, of which they are only the turning point, is the real Death and Re-birth: for certainly no seed ever fell from so fair a tree into so dark and cold a soil as would furnish more than a faint analogy to this huge descent and re-ascension in which God dredged the salt and oozy bottom of Creation.” 
 
C. S. Lewis, Miracles (New York: Macmillan, 1947), 112, 115-17.

A Wing and a Prayer– Thomas Merton

 How close God is to us when we come to recognize and to accept our abjection and to cast our care entirely upon Him!  Against all human expectation He sustains us when we need to be sustained …  Hope is always just about to turn into despair, but never does so, for at the moment of supreme crisis God’s power is suddenly made perfect in our infirmity. So we learn to expect His mercy most calmly when all is most dangerous, to seek Him quietly in the face of peril… 

 Our weakness has opened Heaven to us, because it has brought the mercy of God down to us and won us His love. Our unhappiness is the seed of all our joy. Even sin has played an unwilling part in saving sinners, for the infinite mercy of God cannot be prevented from drawing the greatest good out of the greatest evil.  

When the Lord hears my prayer for mercy (a prayer which is itself inspired by the action of His mercy), then He makes His mercy present and visible in me by moving me to have mercy on others as He has had mercy on me. This is the way in which God’s mercy fulfils His divine justice: mercy and justice seem to us to differ, but in the works of God they are both expressions of His love.       

Yet it is precisely in punishing sin that God’s mercy most evidently identifies itself with His justice.  The mercy of God does not suspend the laws of cause and effect. When God forgives me a sin, He destroys the guilt of sin, but the effects and the punishment of sin remain. 

   

Thomas Merton, in No Man Is an Island, Burns & Oates, 1955   

    

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Thomas Merton’s Prayer

MY LORD GOD, I have no idea where I am going.
I do not see the road ahead of me.
I cannot know for certain where it will end.
Nor do I really know myself, and the fact that I think that I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.
But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you.
And I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing.
I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.
And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it.
Therefore will I trust you always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.
I will not fear, for you are ever with me, and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.
  
  
 
– Thomas Merton, “Thoughts in Solitude”