Is there a God?

    I have been listening a lot to people lately.  I have listened to their pain, their struggles and their diminished spirits and this is all outside of therapy with clients.  This is among my friends and others.  I recently wrote that this year I will probably lose the most people who are close to me, than in previous years.  This is to death.  But I also have those close to me who have suffered blindness and amputation.  I have put a lot of what I consider trivial aside because what is most important in anyone's life is those who are close to them or just other people who may need them at this point of their lives.  When one faces tragedy, one also faces the need to find a way to process and/ or to adapt and change with that tragedy.  There is always shock and denial and there is also bargaining with God.  There is great sorrow and eventually but not always there is acceptance.  This can be in any order, or even omitted.  There is an anger that one experiences towards God, when something happens.  Then there is guilt about this feeling towards God.  One questions their faith?  How can God allow this?  What have I done to deserve this?  Then there are final statements.  There is no God.  I hate God and the most I hear is, "God is punishing me." It is all quite sad.  I remember when doing an internship at a hospital, one physician asked me, "what would Jesus say."  I replied that I was not Jesus and therefore would not know what he would say.  There is so much assumption that so much is known.  But in reality what is it that we really know?  When someone is dying from a brain tumour and asks me why?  How can I provide an answer?  When someone tells me that they have lived a good life and tried to be a good person, why is this happening to them?  The most tragic is when one wants to die at their own hands because they cannot face what is happening.  They have not had the time to discern, to process, to try to adapt.  There is a sense of hopelessness and despair.  If you are going through this yourself, get some help.  It is not weakness when you feel your life is falling apart and you go for help.  That is strength and takes a lot of guts.  It means you want to do something to help you. 
     If you know someone who is suffering, why not go visit them and even if it is to be a sounding board, that is ok. 
     As for God?  Not everyone can believe in God.  It is that simple.  It does not mean that they are doomed for hell and all that nonsense.  If a person is a good person but simply cannot believe in anything but what he or she sees?  Is that his or her fault?  If someone faces a tragedy and doubts God or is angry with God, is that a very bad thing?  No.  It is normal.  Those are questions and responses that face people.  As for God being a punishing God, that is not the God I know.  There is danger in reading a Bible verbatim and taking it all at God's word.  In the Bible you find incest, you find mutilation and you find all the horrors that men and women do to each other.  But, you also see by example Jesus, touching and healing and retaliating against the organized religions.  You see Jesus very comfortable among the prostitutes and poor.  There is where we can learn.  But we are only human and being human is just that.  We must remember when the Bible was written and what was the culture etc at that time.  We can all be cruel given the right circumstances.  Does that make us unworthy? 
     Why not spend about 10 minutes a day in total silence and try to connect with the possibility of God in a world having a nervous breakdown.  Is there a God?  What do you think?