[Granville-Hough] 7 Jan 2009 - Different ways to think about God

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Wed, 07 Jan 2009 15:49:46 -0800
Subject: 7 Jan 2009

    Different ways to think about God.

    One of my church friends gave me a present for my 86th birthday, a 
little book entitled: _Good Morning, God_, by Carol DeMars Collins.  
There is a message for each day of the year, each composed of three 
parts, a wonderful quote from the Bible, a prayer to God wherein you 
address Him as a friend and neighbor, and lastly a quote from an 
insightful writer.  Now I suppose I have been always been in so much awe 
of "Old Man God,"  that I have never felt I could address him as a 
friend and neighbor.  It is a new way to realize that what happens in 
our world is each day determined by what we individually do.  Or by what 
we, along with God, collectively do. 
    We might start a day like this: "Good Morning, God.  How are you 
feeling today?  I want to tell you first that I thank you for the rest I 
received last night; then, second, for the nice breakfast you allowed me 
to select from our grocery store.  I hope you were not too worn out from 
taking care of the earth and its beings while I rested, and that there 
no great catastrophes on your schedule for today.  When I looked at my 
*Los Angeles Times *this morning, I saw reports of many tragedies and 
mistakes and of some heroic efforts when people remembered the lessons 
of Your Son, Jesus.  Please give us guidance on what we should do on the 
situations in our circle of contact.  Thank You, Lord, Amen."
    Well, that gives an idea of what it might be like to consider God as 
Friend and Neighbor.  A few years ago, I got another viewpoint on our 
relationship with God.  My brother Clifford Hough was once talking about 
his life as a farmer where we had grown up.  He said that when he got to 
heaven, he was going to ask God for a farm, provided with pastures for 
livestock, fields for crops, and good neighbors.  He then described good 
neighbors, and he said: "In fact, I think I will just ask God if he can 
give Jeff McAlpin and me adjacent farms so we can be neighbors just as 
we have been all our lives." 
    Of course, one can consider this discourse at different levels.  One 
is the complete faith that one is going to heaven and will be on such a 
working relationship with God that one can ask and receive.  The second 
is that you want to live through eternity next to your neighbor of more 
than 70 years.  This is a wonderful tribute to Jeff McAlpin and the 
bonding between the two.  I know how part of that bonding came about, 
and I will give one example when I tried to be of help.
    But it is clear to me that in God's house there are many rooms, 
suitable for very different ways to live, and were it not so, Jesus 
would have told us.