I have learned so much from my friend Cliff. I want to teach some of his thoughts to the world to honor my friend and share the wealth. Thank you for everything, Cliff.
Idea #1:
More important than believing that God exists is believing that God is good. This is because if God exists and is a purely selfish God, then we wouldn’t want to follow him anyway.
But if you’re still struggling with the existence of God, here is Cliff’s proof: Ants, ducks, penguins and his humming mother.
Ants: Cliff accidentally stepped on a line of ants one time. He stooped to watch them. The ones who kept working walked around the smooshed ones and continued their invisible navigation. The others carried their dead brothers back to bury them. Reason for God’s existence #1: Ants are so complex and they have the morality to bury their dead.
Ducks: Cliff saw a duck standing over a dirty pile of rags in a parking lot. But as Cliff got closer he realized it wasn’t rags but was another duck that had been run over. Reason for God’s existence #2: In a world where only the strongest survive, even ducks have love.
Penguins: If you’ve seen the March of the penguins you know that female penguins leave their mate and travel 65 miles to feed while the male watches the baby. Then she treks the 65 miles back and finds him so that he can do the same, having not eating for four months. Reason for God’s existence #3: the characteristics of God’s devoted love exists even in Antarctica in the hearts of penguins.
Humming mother: Cliff’s mom has a mental disease that traps her in a lonely mind. At one point Cliff prayed intensely for a week that God would be her companion inside her broken mind- because as hard as they tried, they weren’t able to. One day when Cliff was washing dishes he heard her humming. He stopped and listened. It was a beautiful song he had never heard before. And he didn’t know where she would have heard it before. In fact not he nor his step dad had ever heard her even humming before. But Cliff said, she looked content. For Cliff, this was his answer to prayer. God visited her and placed a song in her heart to bring her joy.
So maybe all of these things are trying to tell us that God not only exists but that He is good.
Raw Spoon
