“Who is this God that you say loves you? What makes you think that this

almighty, almighty Creator knows your name? What kind of religious nut are you to swallow this stuff about a personal God who not only cares about us and hears our prayers, but LOVES us?”

No, those are not the words of an acquaintance of mine. That’s what our modern culture is telling me, but in more politically correct words. Cut to the chase, they’re actually saying “You still don’t believe all that crap, do you?”

I plead guilty. I’m that kind of crazy or rather, I aspire to be. I want to look at God through the eyes of faith and see him as much more than a “higher power.” or the “man upstairs” or some benign figure “up there” who I call when I have problems or need help passing a test or getting a job.

The God I want in my life is the same God who inspired heroes like Martin Luther King or Gandhi or Nelson Mandela or Mother Teresa to bring light to our world, the God who lives in every husband who supports his dying wife and in every young man or woman who is willing to die for his country. He is this kind of living God that I want to believe in and carry in my heart.

The God that I want to energize me is not a Catholic or a Baptist or a Muslim.

He/she may speak to me at church on Sunday morning, but chances are I’ll see the divine touch in a dragonfly or a towering redwood or a newborn baby’s cry.

No denomination, no racial group has rights to God. The voice I’m trying to listen to is quite clear about his desire to include all of us under the umbrella of his love. We are all welcome at his table. His is a universal love.

Many years ago I went to Japan as a missionary. I thought my calling was

In order to convert the Japanese people to Christianity, I wanted to make the Japanese people Christian, without realizing that before I existed, He had already showered them with his love, the only thing that I was really called upon was to love the Japanese.

I want to carry in my soul that lesson that I learned in my missionary days. I want to see the presence of God in the poor, the homeless, and the refugees. With my flaws (my friends would agree. “Yes, it’s flawed”), I realize that who I am and what I want to be are still polar opposites.

But I have come to understand that my faults or yours make no difference to this tremendous lover. This God still loves me and all humanity with me. My God is much more than a remote “higher power” and

So, yes, I am the kind of crazy person who not only believes in God but worships him in the guise of the bread in the Eucharist and in the guise of the homeless man on the street corner, and the drug addict, or the teenage girl struggling with her sexual identity.

Years ago, people of my generation used to say to each other, “Don’t worry. God is in His heaven; all is well with the world.” I don’t think that way anymore. God is not in his heaven. He is here among us, within us. And that makes all the difference.