As I eat some pasta while working late, I am drawn back to a strange bit of idiosyncratic behaviour from my childhood. Try as she might, my mother could not get me to eat her pasta sauce. Made fresh, using fresh tomatoes and simple herbs and spices, I just couldn’t and wouldn’t eat it. I loved her Chicken Cacciatore, which was strong on tomatoes and not too far off her pasta sauce. I loved her Ossi Bucchi, (stewed beef shanks) which had a beautiful, robust tomato sauce. I especially loved the veal based tomato sauce when we had Gnocchi, the Italian version of potato dumplings. Her pasta sauce, however, was something else entirely. I just could not eat it. Not from a simple, whiny kid’s “I don’t want to” stubbornness, but from a legitimate gag reflex that I could not fight, no matter how hard I tried, or my mother cajoled me.
The result was pretty simple. Mom would take out some plain pasta before she added sauce to it, and I would add olive oil or butter, parmesan cheese and a few dabs of tomato paste. Problem fixed without too much stress on my late, sainted mother. At least not that she ever let on.
As with my inexplicable dislike for one particular version of tomato sauce, we have our own likes and dislikes when it comes to people. I try to like everybody, and for most part, I’m pretty successful. I have found very few people that I don’t like; I might not want to be best buddies with everyone I encounter, but there are only a couple of people I don’t like very much.
God has no such qualms. From sinner to saint, we are all equally loved by our creator. Some people might make God upset, a few probably make God mad, but there are none so bad or annoying that God cannot love them. At the same time, there is no one that God loves more than another. We are not treated preferentially. Instead, God meets us on our own territory, on roughly our own terms, and deals with us as we are.
Of course, God prefers that we meet Him more on His terms than ours but that, unfortunately, doesn’t happen all the time. One day, we are promised all that will change. One day we will all know and love God exactly on His terms. One day we will know each other fully and celebrate God together as friends with no one excluded from our circle. One day I might even be able to eat the heavenly version of my mother’s pasta sauce. Until then, rest assured that God loves you for who you are. Of that, I have no doubt.
The result was pretty simple. Mom would take out some plain pasta before she added sauce to it, and I would add olive oil or butter, parmesan cheese and a few dabs of tomato paste. Problem fixed without too much stress on my late, sainted mother. At least not that she ever let on.
As with my inexplicable dislike for one particular version of tomato sauce, we have our own likes and dislikes when it comes to people. I try to like everybody, and for most part, I’m pretty successful. I have found very few people that I don’t like; I might not want to be best buddies with everyone I encounter, but there are only a couple of people I don’t like very much.
God has no such qualms. From sinner to saint, we are all equally loved by our creator. Some people might make God upset, a few probably make God mad, but there are none so bad or annoying that God cannot love them. At the same time, there is no one that God loves more than another. We are not treated preferentially. Instead, God meets us on our own territory, on roughly our own terms, and deals with us as we are.
Of course, God prefers that we meet Him more on His terms than ours but that, unfortunately, doesn’t happen all the time. One day, we are promised all that will change. One day we will all know and love God exactly on His terms. One day we will know each other fully and celebrate God together as friends with no one excluded from our circle. One day I might even be able to eat the heavenly version of my mother’s pasta sauce. Until then, rest assured that God loves you for who you are. Of that, I have no doubt.
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