Bill and I were young marrieds with a toddler and an infant. It was mid-1970s. We had made a commitment to join and attend a church, Whitfield United Methodist Church, in part because that was how we were raised. A Sunday School class for young marrieds was being led by an older military couple from Maxwell AFB, Ron and Carolyn Hoover. We settled in and attended weekly class and worship. I can’t tell you about any particular lesson we had, but I can still see the faces of many of the people among whom we lived and sought the Lord together for several years. We eventually all went our separate ways and I have thought about and re-connected with different ones in the decades since. One young husband’s words still come to my mind often. When our leaders asked us why we are together here on Sundays….. what did we hope to accomplish…. this young husband and father said, “My parents raised me going to church. I can’t say it’s made me a better person yet or that I “get it.” But I still come to church and I see people whose lives are different and theirs are like what I want mine to be and my child’s life. I figure if I keep coming and hanging out with them, someday maybe I’ll “get it”, too. Since I can see it here I figure I am more likely to “get it ” here than somewhere else.” We laughed. But behind our laughter was a truth…. none of us “got it” either. We were searching, on a journey. But we did see some people of various ages and stages of life and on the journey around us for whom something was different. It was a difference we wanted in our lives, too. It would be nearly 20 years later before Bill and I began to “get it.” We had not quit going to church and meeting with others and getting to know people who made us want our lives to be different. The difference in their lives was Jesus. And we kept journeying and learning, and asking, and seeking, until we realized Jesus had been journeying with us all along… through the lives, smiling faces, joy, hope, assurance, hospitality, gentleness, patience, correction, kindness, and love of many who had nurtured our faith through the years. When Christ became real to us it was as we walked with strangers and shared our hearts, and broke bread and lived with one another, just like the two disciples whom Jesus joined on the road to Emmaus.
“A Church goer wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper and complained that it made no sense to go to church every Sunday. I’ve gone for 30 years now,’ he wrote, ‘and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 sermons, but for the life of me, I can’t remember a single one of them so, I think I’m wasting my time and the priests are wasting theirs by giving sermons at all.’
This started a real controversy in the ‘Letters to the Editor’ column. Much to the delight of the editor, it went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher:
“I’ve been married for 30 years now. In that time my wife has cooked some
32,000 meals. But, for the life of me, I cannot recall the entire menu for a single one of those meals. But I do know this… They all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife had not given me these meals, I would be physically dead today. Likewise, if I had not gone to church for nourishment, I would be spiritually dead today!’ When you are DOWN to nothing….God is UP to something! Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives the impossible! Thank God for our physical AND our spiritual nourishment!”
All right, now that you’re done reading, send it on!!! When Satan is knocking at your door, simply say, ‘Jesus, could you get that for me…… while I send this message to your children?
IF YOU CANNOT SEE GOD IN ALL, YOU CANNOT SEE GOD AT ALL!”
The pilgrim’s way is the path. The change happens along the way, day by day, encounter by encounter, not only at the end when one reaches the destination. With whom do you journey? Why? What do you hope to accomplish? What about your journey makes it joyful…… enough so that you will invite others you meet on the journey into you home, break bread with them, linger over conversation, and become “family?”