107 What If

What If? September 30, 2009

If you were God – the Master, Creator and Ruler of the universe, and you were looking for a handful of a chosen few from among your creations truly worthy of the privilege to give you a hand at Your ever increasing job, and if you had a treasure to give to them that was so precious, so rare, that really only a few could ever obtain it, where would you hide it? What would you do in order not to make it too obvious and to avoid having masses of people running after it in pursuit of their own glory and elevation, of even the sheer joy and happiness they knew this prize would bring? Wouldn’t you hide it in the most despicable place, among the most ill-reputed of all people, just to make sure that only those who really meant business were going to find it? Would you hide it in a mega-church with millions of members and attendees? Would you hide it in the Vatican? Would you hide it among the glamor and glitz of the tele-evangelists, or anywhere among organized religion at all? Or would you seek out a little group of people with no reputation at all, maligned and slandered, persecuted and despised, but obedient to your word, yes even those parts of your words that none of the other big pretenders dared to put into practice because they said that just couldn’t be done in their day and age? Perhaps you would even hand it to some who weren’t really looking for it, wouldn’t even know what to think of it, and perhaps wouldn’t always appreciate it as they should, thus sometimes walking and behaving in a manner a little less than worthy of their unrecognized privilege, just to make sure you wouldn’t attract any “fans” who were in it for the loaves and fishes? What if you knew all about people’s hearts, and that they have a tendency to fall for any juicy lie ever since the beginning, and thus you only made your special, priceless privilege available to those who had an undying love for the truth and nothing but the truth? A love so great, in fact, that they were willing to give up anything and everything else for it – their ambitions, their possessions, their positions, even their “responsibilities” according to what people would expect of them; and they would be as radical to follow your call in spite of all that and let the dead bury their dead in order to obtain that pearl of great price… If you knew that everybody would be going by outward appearance, would you hide your treasure among the beautiful, or among the ugly?

If you knew that everybody would follow sweet, enticing sounds, would you hide your treasure there, or in a place where words were said that made people shake their heads and reply, “This is a hard saying, who can bear it?” If you knew that everybody’s taste was perverted by the usurper and all they craved was the sweet stuff he heaped on them all day long, would you make the taste of your most precious vintage sweet as well? If you had a rare privilege to give away, and you wanted to make dead sure you were going to find the right few worthy of it, how obvious would you make it where that privilege was going to be found? How easy would you make it? Which would be your criteria? What sort of clues would you give them? Where would you be hiding? – Among the pompous, the glamorous and glorious? Or among the downtrodden, despised and looked-down upon? What sort of skills would they have to develop in order to hear your voice? And what would they have to let go of, in order to acquire them? What would you do if you had to choose a special few from among billions? Perhaps God might actually not be doing anything dumber than you would. What if?