A Phone Call to God

During the week one of my close ministerial friends sent me a prayer in the form of a phone call to God.

In part it said: I want to ask you please to keep, My family and Friends safe and sound.

I froze with guilt – guilt that in the past I’d nodded in supportive agreement when friends and associates had “called on God” for some personal assurance in the face of tragedy as if God was a branch of the local SES (State Emergency Service) and was on standby, waiting to promptly deal with the individual call.

This is surely not the purpose or process of that Unknowable we call God.

If (in the unthinking past) it ever seemed to be, intelligent reasoning assures us that this understanding of God is now well and truly dead.

Experience confirms that this God regularly fails to deliver. Yes, sometimes relief is forthcoming but very often (as we all know) the very worst happens.

Billions of people across the world today suffer terribly.

And that’s in spite of their most earnest prayers.

The answer is to find another God: to finally find God in the real sense – the God within.

That God works outward from the very core of our being, our heart.

That God fills us with strength, courage, understanding, empathy and compassion.

That God fills us with the determination to be the caring change this world urgently needs.

That God fills us with a love that transcends race, economics, gender, status, religious belief, political affiliation or any other exclusionary myth.

The old God is thankfully dead.

Long live the new God within!

That God, and that God alone, will bring about – through our own inspired and renewed personal efforts – the saving of humanity!