Mt 8:18-22 Faithful in Little ThingsWe’ve all heard this question asked before, “What am I, a mere human being, compared to God?” I mean, if I were to stand beside God, side by side, together, and compare, what could I say? The most logical thing would be to say, “I am nothing.” For this comparison would be far worse than the comparison between a man and an ant, or a man and speck of sand. Right? Right!
But what we have all grown up to believe comes from our perspective. What I would really like to know is, “What does God think of me?” We know what we think of ourselves. We love to put a man and an ape, side by side, and compare the two and say that we are not too far off from the other. We love to be self-deprecating when it comes to God-eliminating. After all, we are just another animal who happened to figure out how to walk on two rather than four legs. We would also have to say that we grew up in a century of very negative spirits towards ourselves.
If you have never read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, then I want to recommend it to you. If you have not read it in a very long time, then read it again. Most people do not know that this novel is about her life. I won’t get into all the Enquiry details right now, but suffice it to say that Mary left home when she was sixteen and took off with a married man. Soon after, one tragedy after another began to fill their lives. Mary had grown up in a staunchly atheist-scientific family and so did her lover. In fact, he was a promoter of militant atheistic thought. What most readers fail to understand is that her life resembled that of Victor Frankenstein. She too, by her arrogance and ignorance, had created a monster!
In her excellent novel, the main character, Victor Frankenstein, runs away from his creation. God, after creating us, did not run away from us. Instead, we ran away from him. God did not say, “What have I done?” when we sinned. Rather, he said, What I did is, and will always be, very good. Our Father never refers to us as “monsters” – not even after we killed His Son. Victor Frankenstein will call his creation nothing but a monster.
What does God think of us? Abraham knows the answer because he asked the question: “Would you destroy the entire city if there were less than ten good people in it?” God replied, “For the sake of those ten, I will not destroy it” (Gen 18:33). Would the Son of God die on a cross to save just one soul? God replied, “If I had one hundred sheep and one got lost, I would go after it.”
It is time that we begin to see things as God sees them. Let the dead bury the dead. Let those who wish to live in the past live in the past. If you want to keep holding on to past hurts, then go ahead, but you can’t follow Him. A Christian is allowed to look in all directions except one, back. He is, by definition, one who never looks back – not at past mistakes and not at past failings. He gets up, shakes off the dust, learns, and keeps walking. If God forgives and forgets past mistakes, then the same holds true for us. Don’t forget, Love one another is a commandment.
Nietzsche, the atheist, once said, “A new commandment I give to you, ‘be hard,’” he was really saying, “A new commandment I give to you, be dead?” As G.K. Chesterton so brilliantly wrote in response, “Sensibility is the definition of life.”
Many years ago I was hearing first confessions. One child walked in and began his confession by telling me his sins, one right after the other. Right before he left, he asked me, “Father, do you remember the first sin I said. I felt horrible that I couldn’t. I tried and tried to remember. I didn’t want this child to think that I had not paid attention. Well, after some time, I gave up and said, “No. I don’t remember.” He screamed as loud as he could, “Its’ true! It’s all true! The priest forgets all our sins!” And so does God.
“The Lord is kind and merciful,” even to the little people like us!
P.S. Above is one of the earliest images discovered of Christ. It is a portrayal of Christ as the Good Shepherd. Around his shoulders is the lost lamb he found.
