Random Acts of Violence and Kindness

I want to believe. I want to believe in God. I want to believe in a God that will listen to my prayers. I want to believe in a God that can help me — feed me, clothe me protect me. Can I get my dead brother back? If I pray hard enough?

Prayer cannot produce for me a pile of gold, material things. I cannot promise "I'll never again if only..." That is not what prayer is for.

Pray for courage. Pray for wisdom. Pray to be good and to live a good life.

If it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to go to heaven, why is our government so good to rich men?

I know... we shall pray not for our own wealth, not for our government, not for our President, but for our rich men! Give them our prayers and their wealth will surely trickle down upon us! They may not get to heaven but let us pray that they pave the way!

God works in these mysterious ways.

Except when He is being obvious. Like when sending planes into buildings, or hurricanes into cities. What is it about bad people — these murderers, adulterers, abortionists who attract God's wrath — anyway? Why do they live in, and thereby attract hurricanes to, the Gulf Coast and Florida? If only more of you would got to San Francisco or Boston, triggering the ratio of Bad to Good people formula that God uses to determine were to send hurricanes to, to destroy those heathen filled cities!

(You certainly don't think that something as meaningless as land mass contours, ocean currents and prevailing winds has anything to do with where hurricanes land do you?)

But if God can send planes and hurricanes why can't he snap whatever He has for fingers and produce happiness for all? So we can all stand together and sing "Hallelujah?" Why instead does he take out a club and mess people up as if to "Aria?"

Why would God send such planes and hurricanes? Just to give a lesson? War. Plague. Famine. All lessons?

What about the birth of a child when doctors said there was little chance, the saving of a life from an automobile crash, Lotto winnings? All lessons too?

Why does God's doing appear so... RANDOM?

I think I shall pursue a quiet, material-less life in the country, away — far away — from God's random acts of violence and kindness thank you very much.