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Where is God?
A Memory 2019 - Before Coronavirus
Psalm 14 is like an editorial of the world today. The fool has said in his heart that There is no God. All are corrupt and commit abominable acts, there is none who does any good. The Lord, then looks down from heaven upon us all to see if there is any who is wise, if there is just at least one who seeks after God.
 In the United States, it’s frightening and we all look at each other afraid to open our mouths because violent shootings and racism have been rising like bonfire smoke and hatred has overtaken love and patience and goodness. It’s dangerous to even drive down the interstate freeways because if you cut in front of someone, they might shoot you. You might be one of the victims of road-rage shootings that seem to occupy our by-ways and freeways this year. Sadly, it’s okay to have guns in the car. Even the mentally ill can purchase guns of the worst sort like military style.
In Memphis, a city of around 700,000, there have been more than 75 of what they call road-rage shootings. The innocent are often victims because he or she got in the way of a bad-humored or power-seeking, angered man who settled his angst by shooting innocent people in cars. A power thing, I guess. And on top of that, we have experienced the onset of the power of the digital age, where people can invade your privacy and know where you are when you are there, almost like a god that is out of control. Do you get those abusive messages from Liotch on your messenger trying to sell or seduce you into horrible things? or those constant scamming phone calls? I don’t even answer the phone if it’s not attached to someone in my phone list. I must get 3-4 calls a day that are scams even when I’m in South America. And more, our youth don’t even know how to talk to each other except by a keyboard and then do they really know who they are talking to?
We wonder why someone or something doesn’t stop all this that we have built over the past decades, yea, centuries. The world is supposed to improve and not decline, although when power gets out of hand, when territory is lost, when the rich become too rich and powerful, the bureaucracy forgets the will and value of its people, the everyday ones, the nothing-great-about them ones who have the rights to live in peace. It’s the usual demise of the great Empires - all of which have fallen, have closed down in the end.
There was Achaemenid’s Persian one under Cyrus the Great and the Roman Republic of Alexander the Great, and Nero, trying to eliminate the Christians by feeding them to lions and fiddling while Rome burned. His empire failed. On the other side of the world, the Han Dynasty of Qin Shi Huang, which had suppressed Confucianism, and the Guptas of India were invaded by the White Huns, and the most powerful African empires soared in 1460 as it stretched from Cameroon to the Maghreb, the largest state in African history. The three most important African empires were Ghana, Mali and Songhai - all based on the trans-Saharan gold trade and in the 18th century the slave trade. When I went to Ghana in 1962 and had the honor of meeting Kwame Nkrumah, the very first of the modern African leaders ending colonialism, I was enthralled by the charm of the chiefs and royalty of the Ashanti still wearing their extraordinary hand-loomed woven Kente cloths wrapped around their dark skin. They still today carry a history of great power and dignity even now.
South America had its empires - the Inca of Peru which stretched from Quito to Santiago and was the largest in the world at its time. And don’t forget the Mayas and Aztecs with temples still standing. Empires rise for a reason, and collapse for a reason, usually greed and failure to take care of the common people because the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, that common tragedy.
I don’t know how many empires were founded for religious purpose, but the more I research in my genealogy passion about the people who first founded what became the United States, I realize it is true that there were religious people like Pilgrims who were persecuted in Great Britain, France, Spain, Netherlands, and they did settle this nation, taking over someone else’s home - that of the beautiful, spiritual and strong native inhabitants, the Indians, all in order to live with freedom of religion and speech and move people who loved and own this land into corners of hell.
And yet, as we study the past, we forget that we are in the now, and it looks like the goodness and resolve we depend on our nations to sponsor and put into action, is in a suicide mode. Nothing seems to work right. Too much greed. Too many lies. Too much exposure of what things really are and not what we thought they were. Too much fake news and self-serving power-hungry leaders, just as in the days of Solomon and King David of the Old Testament.
The world goes on and on and few people, especially the rulers, have not learned how to share, to love, to get along, to work together and to care about the destitute, lonely and impoverished. Many have tried, but in the long run, it’s the hunger for power and for wealth and glory that kills all goodness. Empires all fall at some point - you know what goes up must come down- and for years, it has been rumored that the United States will be next empire to crash. I must say I fear that could be true. But God wins, and with our new president and vice-president, I have faith our nation will return to the generous, helpful, trustworthy character our forefathers intended. We must overcome and pardon all whose history has to do with color, race, faith. At least there is hope and dignity being integrating into our lives and souls once more.
For sure, the Media control what people know, see and learn. The police are helpless because they cannot be policemen anymore. Wearing gear that combines not only bullet vests but cameras and computers to record their activities and approaches, still they are always under the eye of the amateur cellphone video of someone seeking revenge. Our prisons are packed because anyone and everyone can have the most violent and vicious of gun - which they can buy at a store not far from their homes. And shootings happen like cheers at a football game. Some racist or mentally ill person thinking he is going to save the world and get attention, walks into a popular store like Walmart or Kroger and kills everyone in sight. The only place I’ve seen or heard of this kind of disorder is in the Netflix movies about the cartels in Colombia and Mexico. It’s like no one has the right to live or stand up for anything. It shouts out that people have no value. It makes one wonder - in spite of churches on every single street corner in cities like mine - is the God we worship and have always trusted and worshiped, still there? Have we who were considered faithful sheep lost our shepherd? Have we focused on the wrong roads and lost our way?
Do you remember that time when the popular thing was to question is there a God? Is God dead? Is God blacked out? Had our Shepherd and Savior disappeared?
As far back as the time the Psalms were written, things were pretty rotten as well. People were losing their focus on the glory of God. Moses’ clan in the land of Egypt was acting perversely, and not following the way Moses had commanded them. And even took up again calf worship, and sacrifices, and people had become stiff necked. God was just about ready to end it all, to bring disaster on them. Times were tough then too, as they are now. As I look through the newspapers and magazines and glare at TV news today, it seems to be that too many of the religious have created something fake and evil and want to be in control and masters of all in their own particular style of Jesus or God, not necessarily what’s in the Bible. Just please fill the offering plate on Sunday. Give me your all for Jesus.
Jesus was on earth not to satiate the holy but to get all men to rethink righteousness and what they were doing with their lives. He was digging down into the world of the corrupt, the lost, the unrighteous, the criminal and confused. The unwanted or non-trusted. The lost who needed to be found.
Often in the New Testament we get a gentle story of the lost sheep. It was Jesus’ way of explaining how important we are to Him and His Father God. If he had a hundred sheep or horses and cattle and one was lost, the owner is going to spend day and night up and down hills and dales until he has found that one lost animal. Well, God is like that with us. He won’t let us go. He won’t let us down. He won’t let us get confused by the muck of politics with its modern fascism, corruption, crime and disasters today. He won’t let us be forgotten or lost so no one knows where we are. God always knows where each one of us is at any time of the 24 hours circle.
God continually teaches about faithful shepherding. We get in trouble and feel we aren’t worthy of anything. But we must see that God, through Jesus his Son, loves the sinner just as much as or maybe more than the righteous ones. The sinner is lost for some reason, and God wants to bring him or her back to the fold, to give them comfort and peace and love and safety. And so, He will seek us until we are found. When God finds the loss of us, he immediately picks up that lost sheep, puts us on his shoulders -like we see on so many paintings of this parable - and then he rejoices - He is thankful to have the sheep or the wayward follower back with him again. And then as he wanders home with the herd, he sits by a fire, I surmise, and tells the story to his companions, rejoicing at his rescue and wanting to celebrate with all those within reach.
Jesus came to this earth not to pat the righteous on their backs and focus on them, but to find the sinners, the confused, the lost and lead them to repentance, into the arms of God, or wrapped around Jesus' shoulders, which can hold us all. I think each of us has such a moment in our lives. And we must never lose hope. If we are lost, we will be found if we just believe and trust our Savior. When Jesus catches us, finds us, retrieves us from the inappropriate life we may have been living, one where faith was in the back seat, and love and hope were nowhere to be found, then something sends out an alert that we are lost and have no one or nowhere to go. And Jesus leaves whatever He is doing, and comes to rescue us, each one of us, so we are not lost but found, we become that sinner who has repented and that spreads joy throughout all the heavens. Yes. Just you or me or the person sitting beside you. We have been lost many times, but when we are found, God tosses us up to the angels in the heavens with a smile on his face. And I pray we have the courtesy and grace to say Thank you Jesus. Rejoice.
~ Rev
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audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
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