What would you ask God if you had the blessing for upfront meeting with Him? Yes, we’ve questions, real questions. The only thing is we’ve to mute our emotions and be reasonable. Thinking about it you’d be amazed at the possibility as to the number and diversity of questions.
I’ve a friend who, for decades, has been buying lottery tickets. He has yet to see anything that comes anything close to any prize money, except of course the consolation prizes. He thinks he should have had some beefy prizes as he was a loyal customer. Well, luck never works that way. So if he had the chance to ask whatever he feels his creator he would ask him like, “Is it fair when people win millions the first or the third time they buy lottery tickets and I have been throwing away thousands of birr for three, four decades?”
Don’t you think many of us might have one common question like “Why is everybody except me making millions overnight! What is it about me that I’m always in the spectator’s seat when it comes to money? Have I committed more atrocious sins than others have?” It is about millions these days. Isn’t it scary? Never thought that when it comes to birr million would be so close, so near yet far. Million birr prizes for talent shows and things like that are becoming common. So maybe to think in the millions might have passed.
But then leaving the million birr stories aside for a moment, shouldn’t we be asking the more important existential questions if we had the chance to make our voices heard? You know, questions like “Why is our world so messed up and why is everything going from bad to worse by the day?” In fact we have run out of all options to find any sensible or worthy answers to this outstanding question and only He can tell us what we should know. In our craving for answers that would rescue us from some of those sleepless nights we might add a couple of questions; “With all humility dear God, do You, in any way have anything to do with it! Are our sins so unpardonable that we should be punished as severely as we are now? We only hope You wouldn’t think we have crossed all the red lines by asking such questions. We’re so distressed and please don’t take it against us!”
We: – God, with all the respect and reverence we’ve for you we’ve some important questions to ask you. We’re afraid we might offend you.
HIM: – What do you mean offend me. You ask me millions of questions every minute and you think I’d be offended over a couple of questions! Though I know some of you had never any liking towards me I never thought you’ve forgotten about me so completely.
We: – No. God! Don’t say that. Finding ourselves in your audience is something we never dreamt would happen. I can’t tell you our feelings right now. If you found what I said was out of line please forgive me. I never meant it to sound like that.
HIM: – You see what I mean! I don’t think I feature that much in hives of you guys or else you wouldn’t have asked for forgiveness over the most trivial matters. Anyway, I can suspect you’ve really serious issues seeing that half of the planet seems to have converged on my place. Ok. What do you wish to ask me?”
We: – As you can see our planet is almost eating itself up with troubles, disturbances, wars, in almost every corner. God, Why is there so much chaos on earth”
HIM: – What! I can’t believe you’re asking me that question! I should have been the one asking and you should have been the ones answering!
There is this debate if why God is looking on while there is so much mayhem and destruction going all over the place. There’s nothing wrong in asking the question. However, the problem comes when trying to answer it as this is one of those most passionate issues preventing us from seeing each other for any length of time. Believe me no answer to this question would escape the ‘controversial’ trap. It is one of those issues which keep us as far apart as far would go. Another red hot question is “What or who is responsible for the awful position we find ourselves in these days?” Let me tell you and I, for one, would most of the time choose to keep my lips sealed when such a question pops up. Not that I’ve nothing to say; but that saying it would be futile since many seem to have already made cut and dried decisions. All of us seem to have the ultimate and no-second-option answer and there is no use entangling oneself in narratives which are nothing but combative words, angry words and angrier words.
Still how wonderful it would have been if we asked ourselves why all these was happening in this age of ours. I mean the fact we seem to be avoiding is that we, ourselves are the perpetrators and also the victims! The perpetrators in one scenario are the victims in another. We, ourselves are the ones behind all the evil thoughts and actions usually focused on practically tearing apart whatever this world has left in the way of social interactions. Look right, look left and there are more calls for conflicts and muscle flexing than for peace these days. Why has become almost impossible bringing together the warring sides the Russia, Ukraine war while tens of thousands are falling and it’s proving to be one of the most atrocious wars of recent times! Many more war ships seem to be going into waters where the dangers of hostilities breaking out are lost on no keen observer.
There are accusations of war planes of some nation ….the air space of another and no one knows when the bombs come flying down and the anti-aircraft guns open up. It’s that bad. So, pestering The Almighty while we know we, and only we are responsible for whatever mess and mayhem is happening. And it’s while the world is so dangerously unruly that the WEF guys are telling us about a one world government in six, seven years’ time! Ridiculous!
Maybe, just maybe, there are a lot of questions we should ask ourselves first!
The Ethiopian Herald August 13/2023