I rarely follow the daily prompts for blog posts. Today’s suggestion caught my eye because I’d recently had a discussion with someone about the topic.

Like me, my friend is a female in her seventies. And like others in our age group we have some medical issues. I was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in my early thirties. At the time I had three children under eight. With determination and God’s grace and patience, I went on to have another child, go to college, learn to drive, and build a career. Oh. I almost forgot! At fifty I remarried and we bought our first home. My friend didn’t start to have health problems until she was seventy-four. Heart disease kept her hospitalized for almost four weeks just before Christmas.

When we talked about the future I found I have more concerns for my children and grandchildren than for myself. At my age I know I have less time before me than behind me. I’m certainly going to die. Although I am Jewish, I believe in reincarnation. We are each born with a divine purpose; to teach and learn. No one is “perfect”, but everyone has something they have learned that brings us closer to God (our Creator). One of our obligations is to share what we have learned. With so many things we may have learned and forgotten, by chance or purposefully, we must look to others for guidance. Each lesson learned brings us one step closer to God and perfection in God’s plan..

My friend, a lapsed Catholic, has a more Christ related belief. She believes in “sin” and takes the Ten Commandments seriously. (There are 613 Commandments in the Torah!) Many of the 613 commandments are obsolete in today’s world. As far as the ten that Catholics and Christians are supposed to guided by, they easily fit modern times.

My friend, who I’ll call KE, doesn’t believe sinners will be doomed to hell for breaking any of those big ten. She believes in purgatory, a sort of waiting room where the soul waits and does penance to finally attain heaven. Basically, the soul suffers spiritual anguish at being separated from God. As a Jew, I don’t believe in hell. I believe in Olam Ha-Ba, (The World to Come.) This is a spiritual world where the soul goes when we die. There we are able to be with the Divine. Unlike Christians, Judaism doesn’t encourage us to do good in order to be rewarded after death. Our reward is helping those less fortunate. That doesn’t mean Judaism is “better” or “worse” than Christianity or any other religion. Faith comes from the heart and we follow our hearts.

So how does this relate to my worries for the future? As time passes and people become less tolerant of our differences in beliefs, values, and lifestyles, we draw further away from God. What about atheists, you ask. If they are as accepting of the beliefs and practices of others, if they do good, does their belief or non-belief in God mean they will be “punished”?

Can science and religion be reconciled? Why not? For those who believe in a Creator or God, who’s to say the universe(s) weren’t created by God for us to explore? And isn’t it possible God created other species, worlds, galaxies? If so, will we meet? Will we accept them? Will they accept us?

My concern for the future is all wrapped up in these questions. If there is power in prayer, perhaps, for those who believe, we should pray for life for generations to come. For those who don’t believe in prayer, maybe for the sake of science and discoveries yet to be made, a positive thought and a lot of kindness can go a long way.