When I read the Bible for the first time, I was amazed to find that it didn't make anyone look like they were wonderful.

Chapter 4 from:  A Very Small Picture . . . of a Very Big God (A video-book about our Creator, and the things in ourselves that affect how we know Him).

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Huge thanks to:

- My neighbors for putting up with my fuzzbutts on their land, and for helping me get them home!

- My friends at Penticton Honda for keeping my rig running despite all the abuse

- Everyone who encouraged and supported me to get this project launched

- All my hard-working country-life friends who have helped me figure out how to do this ranch thing

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Here is the text from the video:

I LOST MY COWS! . . . AND FOUND GOD.

When I was twelve years old, my parents gave me a bible for Christmas.

I was super disappointed.

Because what I really wanted . . . was a puppy.

I started reading it anyway, and I found that I couldn’t stop.

There were stories of bravery and treachery. Of prosperity and disaster.

Of men and women struggling to find God and follow Him. And others who opposed God and paid the consequences.

I was fascinated to find that no one in the Bible was made to look like they were wonderful. Maybe that’s why I found it so captivating. Even the best of these people messed up all the time.

Hey! These people are just like me! Total mess ups!

But many of them with good hearts who were trying to do the right things despite their many flaws.

And then there was God.

AKA. Mr. Not like I was expecting Him to be.

He wasn’t a force or an energy. And He also wasn’t a human, but he was definitely a person.

As I continued to read, I found that even though He wasn’t Mr. nice guy . . .

He was big on Justice. He got angry when people would act wickedly, and He got annoyed when they acted foolishly.

I was learning that even though He knows that people will regularly let him down, he continues to entrust them with important parts of his plan.

Sometimes he steps in and does miracles, but most of the time he expects us to do our part while He grows up His people by letting us experience the consequences of our good and bad decisions.

He is constantly preparing His people for more important tasks, and although he will eventually punish people for every evil intention (or pay the price himself, if we ask him to forgive us) there are times . . . when he is almost pleading with the most evil of people to turn from their ways.

Through all of these stories I was learning what love was. And, like God himself, it wasn’t what I was expecting. To me, love was being nice to everybody. To God, love was meeting their most important needs. Even when it came ahead of his own.

To God, love wasn’t concerned about making everybody happy. It was about making a way for good-hearted people, in a world full of people, who all too often default toward apathy, arrogance and even deliberate evil.

I understood, from going to church, that eternal life Was the ultimate most amazing thing that God had planned for everyone who would turn to him.

As I was getting to know him, through all of these stories, the biggest thing that was impressed on me, is that He would do anything, including giving up the most important thing in the universe to Him, in order to prepare a place for these obstinate, and often foolish people he created.

I learned that He was willing to give up the life of his own son, in order to save us from being punished for our sins . . .

But only after he tested one of us to see if we would be willing to do something similar for him.

I found that I really liked this God person. Especially because he didn’t require me to be perfect.

As I was pondering this idea of living with him forever, I read what Jesus prayed before he went to the cross. And I understood for the first time,

that I had been thinking about eternal life, the wrong way around.

Eternal life wasn’t living forever with a God I was happy to know. Eternal life, by Jesus’ own definition, actually WAS knowing God!

It wasn’t the things he could do for us or give us. And eternal life didn’t start on the other side of dying. His offer of Eternal life, the most amazing thing He wants to give us. Can start right now.

Jesus, said, come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest for your soul.

So what do you think?

Does that sound like the kind of God you would like to know better?