"Was he planning only for believers or for those who just have faith?  Did he envision all the wars that were fought in his name?  Did he say there was only one way to be close to him? . . . when God made me."
     It's a poignant expression of questioning and wonder, and capture what many of us think about God.  Penned by singer Neil Young, these words seem to be asking God why, if you've made us, you also decided that only those whom you choose will really experience you?  Is this fair?
     Copious amounts of ink and thousands of reams of paper have been expended in an effort to address these questions.  None have resolved them.  I do not pretend to know, either.  Why, God?  But I can say this.  If God did indeed create the world, and if God did indeed enable every human being to have life, then he surely knew that everyone will live and, sadly, die.  Yet the vastness of God's vision for the universe is beyond our ken.  We'll never grasp it fully.  We only know that it is present, working, purposing, guiding.
     We also know that we have choice.  The fact of human choice is a frightfully difficult thing to understand.  Yet without it, we are robots, bereft of any point, captives of an unremitting nothingness of destny.  Frustratingly, we cannot live with choosing.  God can't, either.
     In this is the greatest puzzle of all.