What would God Love About ...........Hugo Chavez?

Hugo Chavez was raised in poverty in his native Venezuela where both of his parents were teachers. He was a talented high school baseball player and with a baseball scholarship, he was able to earn a degree in military science and engineering. Chavez joined the army and soon became head of an elite paratrooper unit.

Angered over corruption in 1992, Chavez organized and led a huge attempt to overthrow the government The attempt failed, but while Chavez was sent to jail for two years his popularity among the poor of Venezuela soared. By 1998 he was elected President. As he implemented various wide range, transformational changes in Venezuela Chavez became more and more polarizing. The established rich class came to despise him, while the lower classes supported him blindly. With each new reform, which exemplified more and more of his socialistic worldview, he increasingly split the country. In 2002 he was chased from office and replaced by one popular uprising, then rescued and reinstated by its political opposite within two days!

His original term of office should have expired in 2004, but Chavez has been reelected several times and has since won passage of a constitutional amendment (to the constitution that he instituted in 98) that now allows him to be president forever.

So what do we see in this short biography that would draw the love of God? I believe that no matter how we live our lives, we are all subject to God's default love setting. That is: God loves those made in His image. As you could fall in love with any baby you hold; the innocent, open heart-ed canvas before its inherent corruption is manifest, so God sees each of us before our choices are made. His support, and endorsement, is ours to lose. He will not lend His name to one who does not concur with Him, naturally.  God's love for those who reject Him may be sometimes frustrated and futile, but it does not die.

Chavez demonstrated a stewardship of TALENT and INTELLIGENCE that showed in his sports aptitude and college training and in his LEADERSHIP skill and his CARING for the poor. These are all things that originate with God and reflect His glory when applied in our lives. I'm afraid that Hugo Chavez has used these qualities to more harm than gain, and so squandered his gifts, but as is true for the rest of us, God's great love is steadily offered to him, and need only be received through an open and obedient heart.