The dying man refused to pray.  I learned he was mad at God because several years earlier, his wife went through a painful death from cancer.  The man had prayed and lamented, “If God is all powerful and all loving, why would he allow so much suffering in this world” and as her suffering continued, he threw God out of his life forever.

His questions were good ones, without easy answers.  

Like most kids, this man used to believe in Santa Claus.  As children, our brains arewired so that Santa and God are kind of alike. . . Both are invisible, wise, and concerned that we do good.  Suddenly we find out that Santa Claus is pretend.

So we throw our belief in Santa out the window, but are told that God is still real.  Then, as many of us grow up, we experience trouble, sickness or injustice so we start to ask harder questions about God, but rarely get the answers we are looking for because we don’t know who to ask, or how to ask for help.  

In the end, our child-like faith is as deep as our theology ever gets.  We have calculus sized questions, but only addition sized answers.  So we discard God the same way we did Santa.  

And that indeed is good news, because our God – the true God – is way, way bigger than Santa.  He’s also way bigger than our questions, does not mind when we get mad at him, and loves it when we sincerely seek his answers.

He is a mystery whose ways are far beyond our own.  God is not a puppet we control, nor is a He a god-in-a-box that we can use as we need him.  But He has shown us enough about himself that we can always know He truly loves us.