PLAYING BLACKJACK
with GOD
By Laurie Gregg and Kellie deRuyter
 

   “All right. Back to your ‘why’ questions," said God. "I know you’re going to be even more ticked off when I say this, but sometimes you make me laugh.”

​

    “I make you laugh?” Laurie said incredulously, clearly offended at this remark. 
    “I’m sure he doesn’t mean he’s laughing at you,” Kellie  said hastily. “I’m sure he means she’s…uh…well, what do you mean, exactly?” She finished lamely.

    “I’m laughing at some of the conversations you have with others, not at you, Laurie. There’s always a reason for things — and it’s not the devil. I’ve heard people say that to you, too, and I want you to know it’s not ‘the devil.’ There is no ‘devil.’ That’s a made-up concept created and perpetuated by humans. There is always a reason for every single thing that happens, and I approve each and every one. It’s all under my supervision. I know everything about all events, and I’m telling you that every one of them is meant to happen. In fact, they must happen.”

​

Kellie stared at him, speechless. After a moment, she glanced at Laurie to see her reaction, and saw she was even angrier.

     “You know what?” Laurie said. “I can’t just sit here like I’m in church listening to the preacher and say, ‘Oh, okay.’ What do you mean they must happen? What do you mean you approved each one? Why must you make all these people suffer? People that trip and fall or break their legs or something, that’s one thing, but you rip people’s mates from their hands with rushing floodwater. Families drown as they escape into their attics, waiting for the help that never comes. You allow people to go missing.

    “Shoot. We could talk about September 11th, too, while we’re at it. Katrina was very much like September 11th, when people didn’t know where their loved ones were. Thousands of photographs of missing family members everywhere, so many teary-eyed people wondering: ‘Is my child dead or alive? What about my dad or my mom?  What happened?’ It’s just so, so—” Outraged, she only fumed, unable to continue.

    “You, and all humans,” he replied calmly, “want to have all these questions. As souls, you all come into your human lives because you want to be put in these predicaments.”

Well, thought Kellie, no one could ever accuse God of being a people-pleaser. He did not seem to feel obligated to help them feel better, that was for sure.

Laurie found her voice again. “Guess what? I don’t care how worldly our souls are. I just can’t imagine my soul or any of my friends’ souls saying, ‘I wonder, what would it be like for the person I love the very most to just vanish and for me not to know if they are dead or alive or eaten by an alligator or what.’ I really can’t imagine it. I don’t care how wonderful our souls may be, why would any fool or soul choose to suffer like that?”

   “It’s all part of the game,” he said.

    “What game? I just want to scream right now. It’s all part of the game? You know what? I disagree with you even if you are God. How can you say, ‘It’s part of the game’? Would I really sit up there in heaven and think to myself, ‘Oh, I’m going to play the game where my heart’s ripped out while I watch my child be swooshed away?’ No. I don’t think any soul would choose to play that game. I just don’t.”

​

    “Oh, but that’s where you’re wrong, Laurie. All of your souls choose to play the most horrendous games. At least from your human perspective, you see them as horrendous. From your vantage point, they seem to be the most horrible, horrible things.
     “Listen carefully, because this is important: When you are in the spirit realm—or in heaven, however you prefer to think of it—you are in a totally different mindset. You’re in a totally different space. The things that are so horrendous to your human bodies and human minds are not all that horrendous to your mighty soul. Just the way a bodybuilder would work hard to build up his muscles, your mighty, mighty, strong soul works hard to build itself up, to strengthen itself, to nourish itself.
     “I know you’re thinking, ‘How could sadness be nourishing it?’ But the sadness is nourishing it. The loss is completing it in a way that is hard for you humans to understand. For your soul to be totally complete, and I’m talking lifetime after lifetime after lifetime, you must experience every single thing. You must. That is why one soul takes so many different bodies, living so many different human lifetimes. There is no other way to gain that breadth of experience. It’s just how the game works.”