Beech Tree News Network

When my youngest daughter, Nikki, was a little girl, she rarely took your word for anything.  If I told her all of the ice cream was gone, she would say, “Show me.”  I had to dig the empty carton out of the trash so she could see.  We started calling her Miss Missouri.  She came by it honestly.  I held the title long before she did.  I’ve always been a fan of tangible proof.
    I come from a Christian background, so I depend mostly on the Bible for my information about God.  In view of that, and the verse in Hebrews that states, “Without faith it is impossible to please God,” I must have disappointed Him on several occasions.
     I have taken at face value the verse in Isaiah where God says, “Come now and let us reason together.”  Many times, I have come to God with the words, “This makes little to no sense.”  I’m usually complaining about having to live on planet earth when I use that complaint.  I have never understood the need to live here in pain and suffering while the promise of a life in paradise in the bye-and-bye stretches out in front of me.
    I’ve read many theories about why man is sent to this earth to live.  The explanation in Genesis is that the first couple, Adam and Eve, chose to disobey God, therefore their progeny was doomed to suffer on this side of Heaven.  More recent explanations center around man’s need to learn to love God and his fellow man in order to pass on to a paradise with God.  At the risk of sounding blasphemous, I have not yet found an explanation that satisfies me completely.
     This week, I was listening to an interview with Sabastian Junger on NPR.  He wrote the book, “Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.”  In the book, he explains that the PTSD many US soldiers suffer  isn’t based mainly on the horrors of war, but on the feeling of losing their sense of community after they return from war to communities they feel they are no longer a part of.   
I understand man’s need for community, although I haven’t always embraced it.  I read recently that when God created us, he made us in such a way that we would need him, and that we would also need the presence of God that dwells in others.  If there is a single lesson for each individual that is placed on this earth, that one is probably mine.  Here’s why.
When my ire is raised, it is usually over my feeling that someone else isn’t doing their part.  My rants usually consists of phrases like, “why don’t people just do the right thing,” and “if everything didn’t get dumped in my lap,” and “unbelievably selfish of them,” and the list goes on.  When I get on one of those rants, I’m ready to take on Lucifer himself for choosing to do the wrong thing while he had Paradise at his fingertips.  “Look at how far I’ve come in spite of my circumstances,” I say.  “I would have thrived in Paradise!”  I get pretty smug about the whole thing.
The Bible says Lucifer fell because he no longer believed he needed God.  That’s usually when I mess up: when I try to tackle things on my own.  In his book, Junger tells of an interview with a journalist who went through the conflict in Bosnia, during which the town of Sarajevo was under siege from 1992 to 1996.  The journalist confessed, “We were better people during the siege.”  She went on to say it was because they needed each other during the conflict. 
Maybe, that is my answer for being put here on planet earth.  I need to learn that I need God and I need the presence of God that is found in others.  Maybe, it’s so I won’t enter Heaven with a smug attitude and end up like Lucifer.