I know

I’ve always known that Adonai loves people. I’ve always known that He is merciful and kind and just and good. I don’t know why or how, but I’ve always known it. Maybe it’s because I heard it said so many times that I got to know it for a fact, or maybe because I wanted to believe that even though what I saw around me disproved that fact. Either way, I knew what He is suppose to be like and every time something happened that challenged my so called belief, I would end up a mess, not knowing what to think of Adonai any more. I’d come up with lines like ‘I know you are a good God, so why? Why do You allow this to happen?’ and every time I had to accept the fact that there is no answer. But I was wrong.

In Judaism there is a saying that if you ask the wrong question you cannot expect the right answer, so I had to conclude that my questions were silly, not because they were questioning God and that’s a ‘no, no’, but because I had wrong expectations.

I didn’t understand that my knowledge of His attributes was just knowledge until He taught me.

So, if I say today that God is good, it means that I’ve been more than a thousand times in a place where He could have ignored me because of my unfaithfulness, but He chose to show me goodness.

If I say today that God is merciful, that means that I have been pitiful in His eyes more times than I can count, but He chose to show mercy to this silly child of His.

If I say today that God is slow in anger, it means that I gave Him reasons to get angry with me dozens of times, yet He chose not to be angry.

If I say today that God is a loving God, it most certainly does not mean that He was nice to me, but it means that He found enough strength in His heart to love me and love me until death, not with words or songs or embraces, but dying in my place and loving me even from beyond the grave, so much so that He resurrected for me.

If I say today that God is forgiving, it’s not because I’ve learned by heart the ‘4 steps to get to heaven’ but because I was in need of forgiveness countless times and every time He looked at me and couldn’t bear the thought that I am tormented by the guilt of sin, so He cleansed me every time.

If I know today that God never lets me go it’s not because I heard it in a song, but because I fell so many times that no one in this world or the next would ever have hoped for me again, but He was always there, always waiting that I would hope in Him enough to get up and keep going.

If I say today that God is faithful, it’s because no one has ever been as unfaithful to Him as I was, yet He always… always remained faithful to me.

Adonai is good! Adonai is merciful! Adonai is kind and graceful! Adonai is loving! Adonai is forgiving! Adonai is slow in anger! Adonai is faithful!

People look at a tsunami hitting a country or the fact that there are wars and innocent children die and they decide that there is no way that God can be good, but God doesn’t perform shows for the world to be in owe, He doesn’t do things to impress the crowds, but for the individual, so that no one could ever say ‘yes, we are all just a sea of faces to Him’ but so that every one would know that God reveals His love to each one as if it were the only one in the world.

Bat Melech בת מלך
Cristina כריסטינה