The Gift of Everything

Orig: 01/19/09

Perhaps I am like an amoeba. I KNOW what I want. I know. I want. And I know how to satisfy those wants – it’s instinctive.

No! I am not like an amoeba. Certainly I have evolved to something higher. I know of many more things than an amoeba; I have discovered in me many more wants; and will constantly seek in the universe to find them. My wants are not a static thing – I yearn for more, for things I don’t even know about. How can I find them?

The amoeba can’t see beyond its pond to fulfill its wants. How much can I really see, see of what there is to want out there? Whatever I have evolved to above the amoeba, whatever knowledge I have obtained, I still can’t imagine all the wants that could be fulfilled in some degree for me – I still can’t see beyond my pond, but recognizing this I still want even more wants!

What if I changed my viewpoint from an amoeba or person wanting know more, to instead some being or thing which KNOWS more and is looking down at the amoeba … What if … What if I were to look down on an amoeba in the pond, and I – in my superior wisdom – knew all that the things it could ever possibly want, need, or use, and I gave it to the amoeba! I could do that for an amoeba. What a gift! As far as it would know, I gave it EVERYTHING.

So what about my wants as a person? What if some much higher being than I, could look down on me and see and know all my possible wants and needs, and if it gave me EVERYTHING? But what of my desire to “want” more wants? What could EVERYTHING possibly be? I can’t even begin to imagine. But what if … ?

Let’s go back to the example of me giving the amoeba EVERYTHING. Why would I ever choose to focus on it, to want to give it EVERYTHING? From its lowly point of view, what must it perceive to be my reasons to do that? Truthfully, from my lofty level, I can’t even imagine why I would do that. Why would I waste the time?

Why would some much higher being than I waste the time on giving me my wants?
Perhaps I need a better analogy to understand why some being might choose to do something so “crazy” for me. Perhaps an analogy of a baby is better than the amoeba. Like the amoeba, a baby is small in understanding and has few perceived needs, and I as an adult could choose to fulfill those needs – and even some it doesn’t yet understand it needs. Why would I do that? Well, if it were my baby, because I love him. I created him. Giving EVERYTHING I had to this small being isn’t really a crazy thing to do, when you do it out of love.

So God sent His son to give us EVERYTHING, everything we could want, now and forever. Why? Because he created us, and loves us. This I can understand. What I must reflect on, however, is how great this EVERYTHING is. Like the amoeba or baby, I can’t even perceive what things exist that I might want, yet it is being given to me. EVERYTHING.

God’s gift to lowly man – a great humbling of His being – is a gift so great to so lowly a creature, in truth relatively less than an amoeba – because He loves us. And us lowly beings, what can we give in return? Nothing! Nothing which in any way could match his gift, a gift so immeasurably huge to us. All we can do is accept it, and love the giver of so great a gift. EVERYTHING. For ever.

How much He must love us.