Dear God
I'm not feeling well today
I have this knawing ache
that won't subside. I cry almost everyday, alone, around my family and even lately, in public. I am a sinner. I've sinned more times than I can count, yet, you seem to be the most forgiving entity I know. I struggle with you and at times my faith, I question the Bible a lot and even at church speak up without understanding. You are a fearing God. The only man I fear, for my fate lies in your precious hands. I pray all day long, every day. You are how I start my morning, but the devil, he's steadfast in trying to ruin everything I worked so hard for. I know you see me and hear my prayers. I'm just exhausted with all the fighting and all of the nonsense. You created me and people still hate me and I just thought our perfect God would let love just run its course. Brothers and sisters of you don't always see eye to eye. I was lost. I still am, but I know when I see only one set of your feet prints in the sand, you are carrying me, I just hope it's to the pearly golden gates of a heavenly parallel.
A Letter to God
First of all, I know you don’t exist, at least for me. I stopped believing in you a long time ago, without even realizing. I only know that on some regular day - a day that I heard about ordinary death news, I saw cruelty, I experienced injustice - I quit believing.
If you exist, if you’re out somewhere in endless space, please take our sufferings away. If you’re real, I don’t want to believe that you see all these and still do nothing.
Some people say that you existed, but you lost your power. Is this true? Did you lose everything that you had and maybe that’s why you don’t care? If you’r not fictional, at least this version of your story can make me believe in you. Otherwise, I don’t want to worship a god who sees the world now and remains silent.
A Very Long Rant For Making People Angry
Dear god,
I wish you were real, but the dangers coming from your people contradict everything you stand for.
What of the crusades? Couldn't they have been stopped? Only one of them was won. Maybe that is how your disapproval has been shown. But still, most christians I know hate me. I used to be one of them. I hated people like me, all in the name of serving you. I just didn't realize what it meant to be different.
I remember my parents telling me nose piercings were a sin. They said that people should be satisfied with blending in. They said that we should want to disapear, to give our souls up to the lord. And that anyone who wanted to be unique could face the fiery river at the end of the world.
Now I am one of those people. I am a person who chooses not to blend in, who chooses to question your undeniable words written in tongues of old. I have chosen to question these things because no one deserves to burn for what they believe in. No one deserves to burn for who they are. No one deserves to have their life taken for a piercing or tattoo. Now that I'm older, I see just how rooted in prejudice and racism those ideas were. You said Jesus came down to give grace to all people, that no one was exempt. Well, I choose to exempt myself. I don't want to stand by those who draw a line in the sand, deciding who is good and who is evil. Nothing is that simple. But, neither do I want to forget the lessons I learned in church of gratitude and acceptance. Never mind, I do. Because when I wanted to tell the world how much my mom hurt me, my uncle came up to me and said, "This is not what Christ would want you to do. Just accept it. Just be grateful for what you have." I almost threw him off the roof. Did he think Christ would want me to sit and watch as my life was taken from me one freedom at a time. Would he want me to live in the shadows, never daring to escape because of the fear I lived in everyday? Do you want me, your own child, to suffer? Just so someone like my mom can continue unpunished.
I didn't used to think there was evil in this world. Now, I know there is. I wish I didn't, but I do. I wish you existed, but you don't. I wish there was some salvation, but there isn't. There is only me. There is only one person to help me out of a rut and that is me. I wish it wasn't that way, but it is. I stopped begging. I stopped asking for your help. It never came. I'm not Jobe. I give up.
Letter to God
Dear God,
Today, I come before You with a heart full of thoughts, emotions, and questions. I am grateful for the blessings You've given me, the love and kindness I've experienced, and the beauty of this world that You created. At the same time, there are moments when I feel overwhelmed, uncertain, and in need of guidance.
You know my heart better than I do, and You see the struggles I face, even the ones I don’t always acknowledge. I ask for strength to face these challenges, wisdom to make the right decisions, and peace in my heart when life feels heavy. I trust in Your plan, though I sometimes find it hard to understand why things happen the way they do.
Please watch over my loved ones, guide them, and protect them. Help me to be a source of light and love in their lives. I pray for healing where there is pain, clarity where there is confusion, and hope where there is despair.
Thank You for being my refuge, for always listening, and for the unconditional love You offer. Help me to trust in You more, to let go of my fears, and to walk in faith.
With love and gratitude,
Victoria
Lost
Hello, long lost friend,
I cannot remember how long ago I spoke to you (apologies for not using divine capitalizing of my words if I speak about or to you but I simply have no feeling of hierarchy, even when a holy hierarchy, in my system of speech, writing, or thinking), and therefore doubt if you remember me, or, for that matter, care to listen to me at all.
What have we done to what you in whichever way have created.
Now that I mention creation, a colleague of mine honestly believes that Earth as we know it suddenly, as if with a snap of your sacred fingers, was there. No big bang and gradual emergence of stars, solar systems, and planets, but Boom!, without further ado, there is Earth in the universe. Can you imagine? Ha! But, blessed are the ignorant, I'd say. Frankly, I do know that you, or better Matthew in your name, wrote differently: blessed are the poor of spirit, referring to the modest of mind, rather than the ignorant. So, admittedly, it is I who thinks that the ignorant are blessed, and, taking it a step further, should be forgiven for the silly ideas that erupt from their simple minds. Do you know that there are - in this era - masses who claim that Earth is flat? Another Ha! You must be heavily disappointed in the way the human race has evolved.
Furthermore, not only my colleague but much of humanity, and surely its majority, is pretty ignorant if not plain stupid if you ask me (you don't ask me but I'll go on telling you anyway). For, once again, look what we have done with your world, the world that you - probably - destined to be ours.
My parents, may they rest in peace in your kingdom of heaven or vibrate blissfully in the quantum dance in which their ashes were taken up, are the real blessed not to have lived in these times. My parents were of the worrisome kind, afraid of the invisible and, as was proven to me through my disobedience, non-existent dangers that they imagined were hidden in dark street corners, behind bushes and scrapwood, in the use of the tiniest drop of alcohol, and even in the eloquence of people that crossed our family's path and whose motives were not completely clear to them. For my parents, in their fright, to see this world, our world, on fire would have smitten them down in despair and depression.
It is true, we're burning up the place. Assuming your omniscience, you are no doubt aware of what our obsessive materialism and uncontrolled desire for wealth have done to our climate. I have little hope that we will be able to, literally, turn the tide. It is no longer, if it ever was, in your hands but in our hands but alas, we woke up too late. And we? "We" still being a minority, an intellectual elite that Plato may have envisioned as those destined to form the government that knows best for the people they govern. In our times, my old friend, this elite seems to be as ignorant as the people they govern. As if waking up from mind-numbing hibernation, all that these 'elites' do now, I am sorry to say, is too little too late.
Was it only that, that what we did to the climate, you might maybe think that it is part of evolution, an evolution that would, be it not very naturally, extinguish one of the many living species that you, possibly, planned to inhabit Earth. We are no more than the rat, the rainword, the lamb, the owl, or the lion. At least, I sincerely hope that you did not - despite that whole Adam and Eve story over which fabrication I assume you did not have any control - see us, humans, as the crown of creation. And if you did, well, then I can only pity you deeply for what our so-called world leaders display in shortsightedness, greed, lust for power, and incapability to leave principles of religion behind in order to overcome conflicts and to prevent bloodshed over borders of countries, for example.
If you had a plan, I am sure this was not it. Currently, and I guarantee you it is not fed by my parents' fears, I am depressed over and disappointed in my fellow men and me. I thought we'd know better, I'd thought we'd do better by now. But we don't. We are far from being the poor of mind Matthew envisioned (modest, humble, and clear of mind), and you maybe hoped for.
I have no power to change things for the better, save spread little ripples of kindness in the small universe of family, colleagues, and friends I live in. But in the back of my mind I know, that also is too little too late. Deep in my heart, I think, and yes, fear that we are lost.
Humanity has nothing to be proud of.
I am truly sorry to not have written on a more cheerful note.
Your friend,
Milton
God
Today I feel unsure.
Of my place in the world,
the one person I thought I truly loved,
everything.
I'm starting nursing school soon,
but I just need a sign
that after three years trying to choose a career,
I have chosen something that will bring you glory.
And I need a sign to stay,
to keep fighting for this love,
even though I am only fighting myself.
Today I pray for peace,
tomorrow, answers,
even if you decide that the decision must come from me.
I just need guidance,
because I can't go back to who I was,
when I was always unhappy,
and self-sabotaging.
I want to keep moving forward,
if only to further your kingdom.
Sorrows and Prayers
Dear God,
You are infinite, you are all. You are my friend, you are my guide, you are my creator, you are my sense of hope.
I know you see me, questioning the sorrows of the world, questioning the pains I face, the tragic loops from which I suffer.
Yet, I can't stop thinking of you, that you have our back, that you love us.
This must all be for a reason, but then why are there so many ways to view you?
Why do we all fight about how we view you?
I love you God, but it is hard to know how to navigate.
As I child I would think worshipping you is as simple as saying prayer before eating my Oreos. As I grow, I see the grey areas, the fights in your name, the complexities of decisions.
I love you God, I know you wouldn't want this, all of us fighting over you.
I hope you hear my calls to you, I need your love my lord.