One
of my children adamantly states there is no God. When a person dies there is no afterlife. The person just ceases to exist.
Nothing
I say or do can change his mind, but then nothing he says or does changes
mine. The basic difference between us is
“belief.”
I
see a flower and I believe that something greater than “chance” created such
complexity. I hold a baby in my arms and
attribute that miracle to more than evolutionary ontology.
I’ve
seen ugly in my life, so I know evil exists.
If so, then why can’t good also be a palpable existence among us?
Because
I need hope in my life, I choose to believe.
When
reality hits me square on the head, I need the salve of hope to heal and keep
on going. I may not understand sadness
or the ugly around me, but I do understand goodness. I've seen it - a better day
always waits ahead.
I
refuse to believe that I won’t smile again or love again. No one can convince me that I was better off not
knowing or loving someone to avoid the pain when they are taken from me.
I need hope in my life; I choose to believe.
I
tell my son that only one of us will be surprised that there was “life” after
death. If all I did was live a hopeful life and it ended here, so what? According to him, I won’t
exist to continue the argument, but when he wakes up on the other side though, I will
be standing there, shaking my finger at him, telling him, “I told you so.”
It can be hard to deal with those who chose not to believe. My dad gave up Christianity around 2001 and is now a devout athiest. My brother is pagan. And anything I can say to them, they've already heard before. We can only pray for those people.
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