Friday, June 23, 2017

Who Am I ?




Who Am I ?

So, who Am I? 

I am a happily married husband of a wonderful wife who is a perfect compliment to me. Am I a perfect husband?  No! I do my best, every now and then succeeding .

I am a theist, a believer in God.  Have I seen God? No, but I have not seen gravity either, though I have seen it's effects. I was a principal scientist yet I do not fully understand Einstein's work. If I can't understand Einstein, there is no way I would understand a God who created everything. As a statistician I have seen too many coincidences happen in my life to believe that they add up mathematically, they don't. God is too bright for you to see directly. In this universe we only see his shadow.  If you're not even looking for him you'll never see him. 

I am a Christian, a follower of Christ. I believe God gives us our freedom to choose to follow our own way or to follow him. Adam and Eve choose to follow their own way and got lost. They soon learned that without God they had no future. This is called sin. God sent his son, Jesus, the Christ, fully God and fully man into the world as our shepherd. He lifts our sin from us and lead us instead towards God the father. In short we are either moving towards or away from God. The further we are away from God the deeper we sink into hell. With all the confusion and distractions in this world we easily drift away from God. Jesus, the shepherd is the only light  who can guide us to God, the father. He takes our sins and lightens our load. The closer we are to Jesus the closer we are to heaven.

I am a Catholic. Does this mean that I worship idols? No! I worship Jesus. Jesus was a man, he was God and not an idol. As a man I can see his face, seeing him smile, seeing him praying, seeing him weep for me. Since Jesus was before my time how can I see him? I see him in the word pictures drawn in the Bible. I see him in the writings of the early Christians. I see him in the early drawings of the early Christians. I see him in the frozen prayer of the great sculpture Michelangelo. I see him in the hearts of the long line of God's stewards who followed after Jesus in Peter's footsteps. I see him in my local priest when I confess my sins to him and I feel God's forgiveness flow through him, through the cross, through Jesus and into my heart. And finally I am awestruck as I receive Jesus into my heart, not just in words but fully present in his body and blood in the form of bread and wine. I believe this just as the apostles did, as the Catholic saints did, as even Luther himself did. Why do I believe this? I am a statistician, and the probabilities of all the coincidences I have seen in my own life only add up one way. Jesus is the word, he is the light, he is the bread of life. I may not always notice when he is with me, but I do always notice  when I am not with him.

Copyright 2017 Daniel Strizak