Can't Buy Me Love...

Photo of Suzanne Tamin ...

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I've taken into account the new Google Trends as part of my daily news and views to keep me connected. I've always been interested in issues bigger than myself, and that's why I began my search for God at the tender age of five. My quest for Him certainly led me to eastern religion where connectedness is understood and respected.

I don't believe we have to discount connectedness if we're Christians. I know I'm a bit hard-nosed about many subjects that relate to eastern thought and religion, but sometimes I have to stop before I throw out the baby with the bathwater. Sometimes we have to concede, especially when our world repeats itself, that at times it does feel like a wheel. Hardly a new thought comes around, certainly no new sins. The same drama plays out day and night, night and day, week after week, month after month, and year after year. If you think you're bored just reading that sentence, think of God! He knows we're going to step right into that pit and drown in that dirty sin before we even do it, and if he was like us, he'd be so sick of our stupidity that he'd delete us from his cell phone.

But he's not sick of us, or our mistakes, in fact, he loves us, and we certainly wonder about that, don't we? How can he love me, or her, or that dimwit down the street who keeps running his loud generator even when the lights are on? He can't love the neighbor with the barking dog? No way can he love Uncle Bill and his yellow teeth!

Yes he does! He loves us in ways that are too gianormous for us to begin to understand. We have nothing human to compare it to, not even the love of parents toward their children, because we've all read about someone whose murdered their entire family. Mother's murder their children. Children murder their parents. Fathers murder their sons. Lovers murder each other. Brothers murder each other, starting with Cain and Able. Human love can't sustain ultimate love; human love is always conditional and generally carries a price tag.

This really didn't start out to be about Love. I digressed a bit, so let me reign my thoughts and get back to Google Trends and how it proves the point of connectedness and human repetition.

If you read Google Trends you'll learn about things as soon as they happen, which can make you look pretty smart, or stuck up, depending on your friends. The next thing you might question, if you're a Christian is how does God manage to be involved and help all the Christians in the midst of skirmishes, wars and tsunamis? The work of the Lord is daunting. It's also frighteningly horrific what the devil manages to accomplish in one day. Every day someone somewhere is murdered, killed in a traffic accident, dies of cancer, killed in a war, taken hostage or raped. Everyday someone is selling sex and someone is buying it.

Often I'll hear of something dreadful that happened somewhere and think, oh, at that time I was at the store, or writing, or taking a shower, or making dinner or sleeping, and yet these desperate souls were in the midst of horror, pain, life or death. Here I am in my safe world, minding my own business, thinking, oh, how blessed I am not to have had (fill in the horror) happen to me. But doesn't everyone say, "Why is this happening to me?" when it's happening?

It's the mystery of life, isn't it, this wondering how this is all wound up and how it's going to end. Will we be living when Jesus rocks the skies? Or, will we waft up from our dusty bones to be born yet anew and join his flocks? Is there a roll call? Will I finally be my ideal weight? Will the grey be gone and will I need glasses? How will this Apocalypse be organized? Will there be computers to keep all the data straight? How will we get from here to there and how will I find my loved ones? What's to become of all those sinners who refused to believe, and are we going to watch in horror as they descend into the bowels of hell?

We just don't know exactly what we'll experience, and its likely very few people think of the end of time beyond the possibility of a stray atom bomb.

Sometimes I'm guilty of living solely in my little bubble world of Mission Viejo, not thinking about a thing beyond the four walls of my home office. Then there are days that I'm quite literally swept up into world affairs. Yesterday was one such day when I became obsessed with a beautiful Lebanese pop star who was murdered by her Egyptian tycoon lover. Her name was Suzanne Tamin, someone I'd never heard about, yet I was soon intrigued about a middle eastern media frenzy. I watched all of her videos on Utube, even her funeral procession which was quite dramatic with family, friends and fans jostling her coffin over their heads like a moss pit.

Here was without question one of the most beautiful women in the world, living on the 22nd floor of the Jumeirah Beach Resort in Dubai, a woman who could have anything by way of her lover, construction magnate Hisham Talaat Moustafa, and yet she apparently wanted out of the relationship--or she scorned him, or whatever happened, and that will become apparent in the weeks to follow. She was brutally murdered.

This is where I began wondering where God was when her throat was slit eight inches by a hired assassin.

The better question we should ask is, where was Satan? Holding the knife. The young woman was married, involved in an affair with a powerful man who apparently could have anything money could buy, but as the Beatles used to sing, "Can't Buy me Love," Hisham Moustafa could not buy whom he loved and adored.

Sounds a little like David and Bathsheba, doesn't it? For my unbelieving friends (I know I have a few!), here's a story all Christians would love to bury. This is an unspeakable truth about one of our greatest Bible heroes. David. The second King of Israel. How could this mess have come to light? I say this, that God in his glory reveals these things to us so we do not lose hope.

The great prophet Samuel brought David out of the fields where he tended sheep and anointed him with oil. From that moment on the Lord came upon him. He became a great leader and warrior.

Even with all his Glory he became tempted and sinned. In the words of Matthew Henry:

David had Bathsheba's husband murdered so that he could have her. He committed adultery with with the wife of Uriah. He endeavoured to father the spurious brood upon Uriah. When that project failed, he plotted the death of Uriah by the sword of the children of Ammon, and effected it. He married Bathsheba. Is this David? Is this the man after God’s own heart? How is his behaviour changed, worse than it was before Ahimelech! How has this gold become dim! Let him that readeth understand what the best of men are when God leaves them to themselves.

Sin is all over this story about the Lebanon singer. Adultry. Lust. Obsession. Murder. Sin is what keeps our world in horrific bondage, and it's up for viewing through Google Trends.