Differences

  I have found myself saying " Really!?" a lot, "it is horrible" and "unbelievable"... these words have eased into my communication lately and it seems to stem from conversations and differences that I encountered on my recent adventures.

In most cases there was an expectation not being met that caused this jaded talk. As I traveled there were talks about a lot of things including what makes crazy people cross over the boundaries they have and become actually quite evil. We talked about how great Istanbul was ( I have never been there - but the hospitality in Turkey is said to be unparralleled) We talked about how poor the U.S. economy is and argued about what could be done about it. You just can not compare 2 countries that are so different.

We talked about God.

In the last several months I have come up with some undenyable things that help shape the way I talk about my God. The most evident thing is that Jesus, who is called Immanuel, is God with us. He never leaves us. The other thing is that at some point in our life... a point that is deeper than the surface on which we live.. we realize that there are some things we can not control... some things that happen beyond our own doing, our own strategy. These - I believe are the things of God.

So I shared my faith with a woman who explained to me that she was a Muslim - a contemporary type of muslim that is not so traditional (at all) but almost secular. It was her observation after truly traveling all over the world that everyone wants to be forgiven - in every religion. She did not agree with me that Jesus was the only way... but she did believe that there was only one God.

In our travels together I let her know that I grew from being a child who thought that most people were good in the world to an adult that understood the opposite to be true. It seems odd even to me that a Christian would think that....but it is human nature to be sinful. I stated that my observations were that people will lie, cheat, steal and even kill to get what they want, that there is a system of choices that lead people to believe that they need a savior.

I guess this seemed to be too sensitive - so we stopped talking about God after that - we had differences.