God Bless America!

“Are you kidding me?” I ask myself as I turn off the TV. “Some nerve people have” I say to myself as I’m listening to people place God in every conversation.

I think of it this way. I have never been a great person, or anything close to worthy of the title of “Christian.” In fact, I don’t think anyone really is. It means “Little Christ after all.

Like John Lennon said, “We all have a little Jesus and a little Hitler in us.”
Everyone has the ability to be good, but not everyone has the desire.
“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” my mother might remind me, quoting Jesus in the garden of Gesemini. He was not so much pissed at his disciples for falling asleep while they were supposed to be praying and keeping watch for the Roman guards as he was simply pointing out the obvious fact that the human spirit doesn’t allow for perfection. Perhaps we all chase after it in one way or another, but then again, many of us don’t. We’re the Couch Potato Generation after all.

I am reminded of being a kid again. It was Christmas and my grandparents were down for the holidays. It seemed like after I got my toys, I kinda tuned out everyone else to go play. When my grandparents went to leave, they went to hug me and tell me good bye and everything but my 8 year old mind just wanted to go play with my toys. “Are you too busy for me?” my grandma asks, in a tone which makes me wonder today if she was seriously offended or if it was just to make my mom laugh.

Sometimes I wonder if that is how we are with God. We beg and plead for him to give us our stuff, our money, our job promotions, the boy or girl of our dreams, and when we get the toys ie: blessings, we blow God off until next Christmas in a sense.

What do we ever do for God to deserve the things we ask for? I had this conclusion today. We’ll go months without talking to God and then we’ll see our shiny toy and ask for it, as if he owes it to us.

In the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Charlie meets a girl who’s father is rich beyond belief. This girl is the biggest brat you’ll ever meet; a spoiled brat who has no regard or care for the needs of others. This same girl treats her father like a genie and has no care or respect for him. You look at this girl, and ask yourself “Where does this girl get off, asking her dad for all these things? She doesn’t deserve the dirt on the floor.”

But this same selfish person makes up each of us on some level. We only talk to God when it’s convenient and that generally comprises of praying for a promotion or begging for mercy when you’re having chest pains.

But when a visit to the doctor tells you that it was just indigestion, you go back to sitting in your comfortable little spoiled life and put God back in the box and go about your business.

Maybe next time I hear the phrase “God Bless America, I’ll remember that we should be saying “America, bless God.”