I was born with a very pious mother and I can very well remember how much we’ve been taught about religion. I was in a catholic school from elementary to high school and praying has been way of life. From my mother at home to the nuns and brothers at school, the reminder “Thou shall not use God’s name in vain” echoes all the time.
It may sound blasphemous to most devout catholic but I think that always considering God as a very serious god could sometimes ruin our relationship with him. How many times have we heard and have seen people (including myself) get so upset with unfavorable events and immediately point the blame to God. Most get so uptight in situations– no matter how minor – wherein we feel that God is testing us if we can maintain a resolute faith despite facing trials at some point of our lives.
But have we really ever wondered if God tried playing with us? Yes, just like having a known strict parent who for no reason at all grabs one of your toys and just try to be really playful with you. Well, I do wonder right now.
It started yesterday afternoon when I decided to wash our car after I saw that chances of having rain was nil. I did the washing in a very diligent manner and I wiped the car dry just short of getting it polished and shined. I was tired and sweaty when I finished the whole thing and was so proud of what I accomplished. About an hour later, however, rain poured hard like a bad joke coming from the heavens.
After a couple of seconds of being offended, I ended smiling. Why? Because I had this funny imagination that God must have been staring down at me and was observing me the whole time I was washing the car. I feel like he was trying to have some light moments with me to break the series of serious yet silent “discussions” with him for the past several days already.
That short and witty moment got me thinking until I went to sleep late that night. It added another “What if God…” questions in my mind. It opened a new mindset of how God communicates to us. I think that sometimes it may help a lot if we view God in a different perspective from what we’ve been taught about him. Maybe, just maybe, sometimes to make his presence known he sets aside being a serious God. And sometimes we need to consider that he may be trying to reach out to us in a lighter way. This way, it eases the burden we are experiencing and we begin to communicate with him more candidly and thus creating a more effective way of discussion – in the form of prayer, of course.
The questions now linger: What if God wants to play with us? How do we deal with it? Will our short temper flare? What if a divine clean joke may be what we need to improve our relationship with the one we’ve always known as God? Are you game?
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I got a forwarded email from one friend today that required me to forward it to 10 persons. Guess what it is? If you answered spam, give yourself a pat on the back. It reminded me of my Chain Game blog.
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The frequently used words for me lately are God, jobs, baby, food, money and yes, also “words.” So I’m once again amused to find out when I saw that Monday’s AWAD (A. Word. A. Day) had this:
epeolatry – noun: (ep-i-OL-uh-tree) The worship of words.
I’m imagining someone kneeling in front of the word, WORD. Now that’s just weird. But weirder was Tuesday’s AWAD entry:
univocalic – noun: (yoo-niv-uh-KAL-ik) A piece of writing that uses only one of the vowels.
adjective: Using only one vowel.
And also included in that daily mail is this: “CONTEST: Imagine you are a headline writer for a newspaper back in the days when metal type was used. You have run out of all but one of the vowels in the large type size that is used for the headline. What univocalic can you come up with? Email your univocalic news headlines (real or made-up) to (words at wordsmith.org). Selected entries will be featured in the weekly compilation AWADmail and the best entry will win an autographed copy of my latest book DORD. Deadline is Friday Oct 17”
I was so eager to try my hands on this contest and I was surprised how easy it can get. Here are some of my own headline creations for each vowel:
A.
Man And Angst = War.
E.
Sheep Herd Entered Cells. Press’ News Went Berserk.
I.
City Inn Hid Tiny Mic. Irks Indy Kid.
O.
Moon Got Odd. Only Old Owls Hoot.
U.
Gypsy’s Hut Shuts. Urn Put Up.
Oh, before I forget. I sent one of the made-up headlines above. I want that DORD book. So please make your own headline in case you want it too. Do not copy.
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Marcus Can Blog 