“Do you have a minute to talk? It’s important!” said the young man who approached me with a big smile. Talk to me? Why? I had to admit he looked sort of friendly, but whatever he wanted, I was not in the mood. Suddenly I noticed he carried a Bible and thought I understood: He was converting people, and hoped to make me his next victim. No way! Not me!

I observed him self-righteously. What presumption to think he had anything I needed! Had he read the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as I had? Had he studied meditation and yoga, as I had? I was even experienced in the use of mind-altering drugs. No, this fellow would not be able to enlighten me.

“Do you know that God cares about you?” the young man asked.

“Of course I know God,” I answered rudely. “I am God, and so are you! Everybody is God. We are all part of the great cosmic universe!”

He looked puzzled for a moment but then a big grin came on his face. “I don’t know about that, my friend. You sure don’t look like God!”

I rolled my eyes and stomped off.

The thing is, that young man was right. I didn’t look like God at all.

I traveled the world for years longer in search of an answer, until in the loneliness of my own confusion, there was a voice: “Fear not. I am with you. Be not dismayed, for I am your God!” 1

Passing through another town, I met another young man. He too had a big smile.

“Do you know that God cares about you?”

By then I had changed my tune. “Please tell me more!”

That was almost forty years ago and He has never left me since.

  1. Isaiah 41:10