Just Right

Everything about the entrance to this charming house feels just right to me as well, and I stopped 

my car on the side of the street to snap this stalkerish picture. So worth it.

On this rainy afternoon, I find myself mulling over the meaning of life, and I see three distinct and mutually-exclusive possibilities:

1. There is no God. This world is nothing more than a cosmic accident and we humans are merely biological coincidence. Our only purpose in life is to reproduce, and we have no deeper duty than to enjoy ourselves according to whatever moral compass we choose. 

2. There is a God who created us and he is a judgmental God. He demands that we obey His rules, and punishes us, both here on earth and in the fires of eternity, for our mistakes. Our life's purpose is to follow His rules in order that He may judge us to be worthy of His love. 

3. There is a God who created us and he is a loving God. He loves us in spite of (or maybe even because of) our flawed human ways, and has endless compassion and forgiveness for our mistakes. We are born to experience life within the freedom and joy of His eternal love, and to try to love others as He loves us. 

Now, I can't definitively prove any of these prospects to be true or false, but I know without a doubt what I choose to believe.

I choose not to live with the empty fatalism of the first premise, nor the fear and shame of the second.

Trusting what my head, my heart and my gut tell me, I choose to live in the light of God's perfect love and do my clumsy human best to share that amazing gift with the people in my life. 

And on this wet Wednesday, that decision feels just right.