It's Not Ours

It not ours.

None of it.

As a man of Christian faith, I struggle with this – particularly when it comes to our own being. This body and soul that I possess is not my own.

Believing in this brings comfort to some and to others a sense of woe or anger.

You wake up one day only to find that your car has been vandalized, you got laid off, the house payment is overdue. September 11th 2001, the world as we know it changes at the hands of people that most of us have never met – and we find ourselves in the middle of a war that we did not start – as boxes with draped American flags arrive home filled with individuals who believed in their hearts that they were protecting us. Your child, bright eyed and filled with hopes and knowing that there is a loving God above watching over us… dies.

There is no reason for it. There is no explaining it. It happens.

“Why do bad things happen to good people? If God was just and loving He would not do this.”

At times, I wonder that while God sits at his throne with his only Son at his right side, who He sent off to Calvary to die on a twisted old stick – I wonder if He is apathetic, and then I remember all of the wonderful things and how I am the one who is not caring enough.

Am I?

We have taken possession of everything, or so we have been led to believe, perhaps this is the greatest lie we ever were told; that we own ourselves.

We are merely stewards over what we sense. Even the “we” is a vague description of ownership, as though it means something more than it is – a group of similars that is personally recognized.

Both believers and nonbelievers share this common thread that life is the great journey.

I will add one more thing as though it were my own: If life is a journey, then death is the destination.

Funny thing is - death to a believer can be celebrated.

But it is so hard. With tears in my eyes, it so damn hard.