A Letter to Sears

"I won't be shopping at your store for Christmas this year. I am very annoyed at how inhumane you have treated people. Thanksgiving is the one generic day we have each year to relax from work and be with family. It is the day to be thankful for all we have and share. The only reason you are staying open is to get one more greedy day of sales to shove into your pockets. To hell with the peons that do your real work. I venture to say the higher-ups will not be working. So long, you inhumane thieves of lives."

Utterly Ashamed

I have not done my life well - the number of times God had to help me along proves that - but I have always remembered that I was given a free life. There's always that dark corner of my mind where I store my shame. That corner keeps getting fuller and there's less room in my mind to enjoy things where I don't notice that huge pile. But most of the time I have been aware of the God who gave me my life and have been grateful. All through my life, however, I have been around many people who are totally ungrateful and won't even set aside a moment to think about it. In the new century, especially, things are looking quite bad. I have a car that's fun to drive, a phone that does everything imaginable, a PDA that keeps track of everything, a watch that sets itself, TV shows that I can watch whenever I feel like it, a shortwave radio to listen to faraway stations, a laptop on which I have many projects going on the Internet, yet I still have time for God. There's music on my phone - stored and radioed, I can watch digital movies and TV shows on my laptop, I have games there as well as on my PDA and phone, and still I have time to think about God and contemplate things.

One of the things I contemplate is how a person can play games, watch TV, play paintball, go hunting, collect things, go site-seeing, and do so many other things to fill his time - and never once think about Who made it possible. God gave us our lives and let us choose what to do with them. I have made many bad decisions but even I, as apathetic as I've been at times, cannot imagine not giving God a moment of my time - ever. People say things and I will ask them questions pertaining to their statement and am appalled at the answers I get. God is not something they can even honestly think about. They have their ready-made answers that pop out of their mouths without considering what has been asked.

And they have been supplied well with all sorts of comebacks. Yet I can interrogate them just a little and they will admit that they really don't know what they're saying (it just sounded good) and they tell me they just really don't care, in so many words. It seems to be an American phenomenon to wait until the last possible moment, then tell God you're sorry and everything will be fine. Suddenly it fits into their schedule. Something tells me that's not making God happy.

I'm about to sound religious here as I explain a concept, so some of you might want to go play with your toys so you won't be uncomfortable. Christians have a word called 'repentance' which they don't really explain well. However, it is a very simple concept. God wants to see us face to face. If we don't feel like it, we turn our backs to Him. We are very greedy little critters and we're just so busy. There we stand entertaining ourselves with our backs turned to Him, shunning Him. Hopefully, at some point in our lives while there is still a chance (not dead yet), we realize that He is still there, waiting patiently. Our conscience starts to hurt and we realize what a horrible thing we have done. Then we repent. That means we turn back around and acknowledge his presence. He is still there, loving us and caring about us and helping us behind our back, and we finally find the time to turn back around and admit it.

I am glad - and you should be, too - that I am not God. There would be a lot of impatience and zapping going on. I get very tense when I am ignored. My daughter has a bad habit of trying to strike up a conversation with her mother when I am disciplining her about her latest error. What would it be like if there was a whole world of people out there doing that? No, I wouldn't allow them to do whatever they want to do, then suddenly show up on my doorstep when they need something. I would be very bad in God's position. You would actually have a reason to hate me.

Nobody has a reason to hate God. They just do. I'm ashamed of the whole human race. Especially me.