“My friends, if we tend to the things that are important in life, if we are right with those we love and behave in line with our faith, our lives will not be cursed with the aching throb of unfulfilled business. Our words will always be sincere, our embraces will be tight. We will never wallow in the agony of ‘I could have, I should have.’ We can sleep in a storm. “And when it’s time, our good-byes will be complete.”
“Remember, the only difference between ‘marital’ and ‘martial’ is where you put the ‘i.’”
Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: comfort, love, and a peaceful heart.
“Mitch,” he said, “faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe.”
“For what you have. For the love you receive. And for what God has given you.” That’s it? He looked me in the eye. Then he sighed deeply. “That’s it.”
I once asked the Reb how he knew God existed. When he asked me to first make the case against Him, I argued that we live in a world where your genes can be mapped, where your cells can be copied, where your face can be altered. We have science to tell us of the earth's creation; rocket probes explore the universe. The sun is no longer a mystery. Why, in such a place, where the once-great mysteries have been solved, does anyone still believe in God or Jesus or Allah or a Supreme Being of any kind? Haven't we outgrown it?
He leaned in. "Now. My turn. Look, if you say that science will eventually prove there is no God, on that I must differ. No matter how small they take it back, to a tadpole, to an atom, there is always something they can't explain, something that created it all at the end of the search.
"And no matter how far they try to go the other way—to extend life, play around with the genes, clone this, clone that, live to one hundred and fifty—at some point, life is over. And then what happens? When life comes to an end?"
He leaned back. He smiled.
"When you come to the end, that's where God begins."
No comments:
Post a Comment