Sr. Margarita Bareikaite

Reflections

God is God for all Life

Sr. Margarita Bareikaite belongs to the order of the Sisters of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a Lithuanian order in Putnam, Connecticut. She is also the Chairperson of the Religious Affairs Council for the Lithuanian American Community, Inc.

The ways we pray to God are indicators of how we think about God. If we are always asking for things, then God becomes a kind of giant slot machine. The more prayers we put in, the more things we hope to get out.

Is God, a God for everyone? The answer seems obvious, but there are times when we don’t accept the obvious answer. We like to make God our own. He belongs to our race, our ethnic group, our church, religion, nation. In the same way, the Israelites believed God was leading them into battle, helping them slay the enemy.

Whenever a religion pictures God as leaning toward a certain group, then there could be problems. The Israelites were chosen people by God, which is true. However, God is God not only for the Israelites, but for their enemies and nations as well. Often we overlook the message of Jonah. We turn instead to the message found in such places as the Psalms. The Psalms are prayers and songs, which relate much of the Israelites' history.

Religion should bring us together. God is God of all life. Religion is meant to bring us closer to God, then it must bring us closer to all life. Religion has to do with achieving openness. If our religion closes us off to any section of humanity, or even any form of life, then it is unhealthy. What religion can do is help us see that life itself is the center stage.

God’s love overwhelms us no matter where in our universe we might find ourselves. Religion should help our love to grow as wide and as deep as it can.

Everything living is special. All life is sacred. Religion should teach us this. Again we can use the concepts found in St. John’s letters: God is light and love. God is bigger than we can imagine. He is found everywhere in our vast universe. God’s love just keeps rolling like the proverbial river. Everything belongs to him.