An Interview With God

I was cleaning up my desktop on my computer the other day.  No easy task.  If you saw my desktop, you would know why.  In the process of exercising my best efforts of tidiness and organization, I came across a document that I had titled, What surprises you most? I had no idea where I found this in the first place so, in an effort not to plagiarize words; I did some research.  Here is what I found out.  The actual author of these words is a gentleman named Jim Brown.  Mr. Brown is no longer with us as he died in 2002, but his original work lives on.  Here it is:

I dreamed I had an interview with God.

“So you would like to interview me?” God asked.  “If you have the time”, I said…God smiled.

“My time is eternity, … what questions do you have in mind for me?”
“What surprises you most about humankind?”

God answered.

“That they get bored with childhood, they rush to grow up and then long to be children again.”

“That they lose their health to make money and then lose their money to restore their health.”

“That by thinking anxiously about the future, that they forget the present, such that they live neither in the present or the future.”

“That they live as if they will never die and die as if they had never lived.”

God’s hand took mine and we were silent for a while.  And then I asked.
“As a parent, what are some of life’s lessons that you want your children to learn?”

God replied with a smile.

“To learn that they cannot make anyone love them, what they can do is let themselves be loved.”

“To learn that it is not good to compare themselves to others.”

“To learn that a rich person is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least.”

“To learn that it only takes a few seconds to open profound wounds in persons we love and it takes many years to heal them.”

“To learn to forgive by practicing forgiveness.”

“To learn that there are persons who love them dearly, but simply do not know how to express or show their feelings.”

“To learn that two people can look at the same thing and see it differently.”

“To learn that it is not always enough that they are forgiven by others, but that they must forgive themselves.”

“And to learn that I am here…ALWAYS.”

I am glad that I ran across these words that had sat patiently on my desktop for so long.  Mr. Brown’s interview with God was an excellent reminder to me, and, I hope for you too.

Stay true and be you —

Annie