Responses to The Raspberry Patch

I never know. Until there are your comments about a Heavenletter™, I don’t know when one Heavenletter is perhaps more outstanding than another. I may personally favor one over another, yet the correlation between the ones you pick and the ones I pick often, but not always, are different.

Maybe the point of Heavenletters is exactly what God’s messages make us, individually, feel. Maybe the point is exactly how and how much they affect us.

What I marvel at again and again is, not just the popularity of a given Heavenletter, but the points a Heavenletter may make that I seem to miss. Often I don’t have a clue as to the power and meaning of a Heavenletter until I hear it from you. You point out the merits to me, and then I see.

Not to compare really, but this seems to carry over to this Godwriting™ blog. I don’t know the significance of one entry over another. I don’t know which ones will bring a greater response than another. I don’t have a clue. I have the joy of writing them, and then they're done, and then they're gone.

However, in regard to yesterday’s entry, The Raspberry Patch, only after I read Jochen’s and Jo’s and Paula’s responses did I have a soupcon that The Raspberry Patch entry held more of that elusive quality than had occurred to me.

This is not judgment I am talking about. When readers show that one Heavenletter or one blog entry is more meaningful to them than another, that’s not a judgment. That’s a personal experience, much the same way that I can say orange is my favorite color. I’m not at all saying orange is the best color or that it should be your favorite color too. It just happens to be my favorite right now and has been for some time.

Of course, I want to say right off the bat that a blog entry that uses God’s exact words has got to be more meaningful and powerful than an entry without God’s words.

So I’m trying to think right now what it is that made The Raspberry Patch more worthy of mulling over than another entry. What was there about it?

First Jochen, who was going on an extended trip to Portugal, wrote:

Something to take with me. Thank You. And thank you for posting it.

If it were not for Jochen's response, I wouldn’t have known that The Raspberry Patch warranted more thought. Without Jochen's response, I wouldn't have known enough to give it even a backward glance.

God has said that everyone is our teacher. In yesterday's entry, God pointed out that the man I saw at the library was a great teacher, and now it really sinks in to me how Heavenreaders are my teachers.

Jo wrote:

I think it was in a Heavenletter just a few days ago where I read about how misdirected pity is.

Jo, as I was writing the entry about the man in a stroller at the library, I caught myself starting to use words like “that poor unfortunate…that poor soul…pitiful existence…” and consciously had to stop myself. Yes, that is a lesson.

Obviously, this beautiful soul in a stroller learned something to an extent that I may never learn, that is, to be glad for what he has and never mind the rest. The man at the library seemed to have risen above what he did not have. He had eyes and ears. He could see and hear. He had good people who took care of him. He could have a good laugh with the best of them. From his point of view, what did he have to complain about?

Because of God’s simple metaphor comparing the man’s life to the life of the raspberry plants, I do see differently. I do not know what else God could have said that could have assuaged my heart the way His metaphor did. A long treatise on the meaning of life certainly wouldn’t have. Just those few simple words, “Would you rather that the raspberry patch did not exist?” stopped me in my tracks.

But that’s as far as I got. And now Paula’s response gave a dimension I had not seen before:

So, we would like that man not to be there, so that we can have a better and nicer view. But he bears lovely fruits, like the rasberry bushes. Do we want the fruit or do we prefer to have a nice and tidy view?

Paula, what you say rings true, and yet I like to think there is more to it than that. It can't all be about our view. For the first time in my life, I had questioned God: "How could He allow this?" I had to be thinking about the man's existence and not about his disturbing my view, although he did disturb my view. I like to think I was thinking beyond myself.

Yet it is also possible that when we question God, we are thinking more about ourselves than the situation we question. More food for thought.

Now, coming back to what I quoted from God yesterday, that was not all of what He said. I cut off the ending of that personal Godwriting where I did because it seemed like the right place to end it. Now I’ll share the rest of what God said:

Gloria, I do not have a body, and I am fine, am I not?