I just received a link from a friend of mine that I found to be quite inspirational. Those of you who know me well - know I am a staunch Atheist. The link I have provided, gave me something to think about. Made me wonder if there really is a God. Then I remembered I was looking at it from my westernized, cushy life. I realized that the presentation on the link below has no meaning to someone whose entire existence - whose ancestral history - whose future – is and was burdened with a struggle to merely survive. To that person, the sweet little conversation with God on the website www.theinterviewwithgod.com is crap. I realized that the presentation was propaganda at its best.

Imagine
life without clean water,
with little food,
with few clothes,
with a shack for shelter.

Imagine
life filled with violence,
with war,
with abuse.

Imagine
only knowing hunger and starvation.

Imagine
a life racked with disease.

Imagine
watching millions of people slaughtered by a government.

Imagine
THAT interview with God!

Copyright © 2004 Sara Coslett

http://www.theinterviewwithgod.com/

Be sure to watch the presentation.

Commentary added later.

Thank you one and all. I absolutely do respect your positions and views on God. I never ask anyone to be like me, nor do most people demand I be like them.

I am hoping that you each clicked the link to view the presentation of the poem written as if one were having a conversation with God. It was their perspective on what they wished to learn from God.
My first reaction to it was, "Wow, that is what we are doing wrong. That is what God wants from us to choose." But then I tried to put myself in the shoes of the people I have depicted in the collage of photograph's. One is from Kosovo (but it could just have easily been from Rwanda), another of concentration camp victims, another of a slum anywhere in the world, another of a mother and her child - dead from starvation, and the last of a hard working man holding out his dirty hands. The images are very powerful and it forces one to ask, how "The Interview with God" fits into their world? How much do they care about the message in the presentation on the website I posted? How much meaning is there in these words to their lives:

I dreamed I had an interview with God.

“So you would like to interview me?” God asked.

“If you have the time” I said.

God smiled. “My time is eternity.”
“What questions do you have in mind for me?”

“What surprises you most about humankind?”

God answered...
“That they get bored with childhood,
they rush to grow up, and then
long to be children again.”

“That they lose their health to make money...
and then lose their money to restore their health.”

“That by thinking anxiously about the future,
they forget the present,
such that they live in neither
the present nor the future.”

"That they live as if they will never die,
and die as though they had never lived.”

God’s hand took mine
and we were silent for a while.

And then I asked...
“As a parent, what are some of life’s lessons
you want your children to learn?”

“To learn they cannot make anyone
love them. All they can do
is let themselves be loved.”

“To learn that it is not good
to compare themselves to others.”

“To learn to forgive
by practicing forgiveness.”

“To learn that it only takes a few seconds
to open profound wounds in those they love,
and it can take many years to heal them.”

“To learn that a rich person
is not one who has the most,
but is one who needs the least.”

“To learn that there are people
who love them dearly,
but simply have not yet learned
how to express or show their feelings.”

“To learn that two people can
look at the same thing
and see it differently.”

“To learn that it is not enough that they
forgive one another, but they must also forgive themselves.”

"Thank you for your time," I said humbly.

"Is there anything else
you would like your children to know?"

God smiled and said,
“Just know that I am here... always.”

-author unknown