Presents of the "Universe Kind"

When my daughter was three, I spent a good part of an hour meticulously wrapping her birthday presents. I made sure everything looked perfect. From the neatly pressed paper to the curled ribbon bow, I thought she was old enough to appreciate the presentation of the gifts. I watched in dismay as she tore off the bow and ran around with it as the prize for the day, forgetting the entire present all together.

My young daughter’s bow experience is no different from any adult’s life experience. We sometimes forget the present of life and focus on just one aspect of our worried lives. Many times, we are so worried about financial stress, family stress, medical worries and our own pain that we forget that life exists outside ourselves.

I once asked a wise old man if he thought life existed on other planets. He told me, “It would be conceited to think that all this was created just for us.” I think about his answer as I look at the night skies wondering what is out there.

Could it be that God created the night sky…the planets, the galaxies, and the stars as a present for us? Does that seem too illogical…too conceited? Did our God create science as a present for us to unwrap?

I love my daughter so much that I did not care how long it took to wrap her present and although I was disappointed that she thought the prize was the bow, it didn’t change my love for her. I immediately began to revel in her delight of the colorful paper curls.

If God loves us, then wrapping the universe up just for us, really wouldn’t be work at all, would it? Look at God’s love from a different point of view. He’s desperately trying to get our attention; He’s trying to get us to see things from His point of view instead our human, time oriented, self-led lives. Maybe He’s saying, “Never give up looking for me…not in your heart, not in your life, not in those loved ones around you. Not even in the stars.”

It must be frustrating for our Creator to see humanity wandering aimlessly through time, forgetting His love, looking for that love in other things that will eventually turn to dust. The famous saying, “You can’t take it with you,” is so true. But maybe we should ask, “Why do we want to take it with us?” After all, the God that created the stars, the galaxies, the planets, all the way down to the one cell amoeba must certainly have something grand waiting for those who want to be with Him in heaven.

When we’re so deep into the why me (because we’ve ripped off the bow and forgotten the present), maybe that’s the time to look up to the night sky and see the present that God has wrapped just for us. And maybe while we’re at it, we should consider that in some distant galaxy there might be another individual looking up at the same present we are.