I was sitting in a church and it wasn’t for a wedding. Lost pretty much describes how I felt. Each person I had met on the way in had given me a warm handshake, a greeting, and a smile, but still…it was church. I sat down in one of the hard wooden pews and tried not to look around too much.
Why was I here? Oh yeah, for my daughter, okay.
Try not to laugh, but I didn’t know there was a Sunday School before church for adults. There I sat in a building with a bunch of Christians trying to seem like I was supposed to be there. I looked around a little and saw people with bibles everywhere. Bible-thumpers. Oh God.
Somebody started teaching a bible study and kept telling folks to turn from one scripture to another. By the time I came close to finding one he would be on a different one. I had no clue where 1 John or Malachi or even Genesis were in the hard, brown, pew-bible I was holding in my fingers and I was getting a little embarrassed at my feeble attempts to find them.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and a soft voice told me, “It’s okay, just listen.” I felt a little calmer than before. Suddenly the bible study was over and children appeared from a stairwell filing up and over to the small stage. A young woman directed them to their places and then they began to recite a bible verse.
2 Corinthians 5:17 Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.
I kept my eyes on my beautiful little girl as she stood so calmly before all the people and so seriously recited the words…and my heart began to break, my eyes filled with tears, from somewhere came a Kleenex. Then it was over and I watched my girl go back down the stairs.
The verse hit me so hard that I wanted to run and shout, but I sat still, with my head down so that no one could see my tears. No one could see the joy mixed with the shame of so many years spent causing heartache. All gone now. I could begin again. I could be someone different and I felt somehow stronger and yet weaker.
Then there was piano music and people shaking hands and I thought it was time to go, but soon learned it had only just begun. Now it was time for church and there was a guest preacher, whose name I do not remember. I do remember his message because I thought sure that someone had told him my life-story and that I was in the building.
When it was almost all over the preacher asked folks to bow their heads and then began to ask people to raise their hands if they needed prayer, or if they knew for sure they’d go to heaven when they died or if they had trusted Christ.
I raised my hand for prayer and heard him say he’d seen my hand and he prayed.
I’d remembered that radio message and I knew I had trusted Jesus and I knew that things had been happening in my life that I couldn’t explain. So I didn’t raise my hand for that, but then he said something I didn’t know. I did not know that a person should be baptized after trusting Christ. The radio message had not mentioned that so when he asked if anyone needed to be baptized I figured that was me and I raised my hand and heard an “I see that hand. Thank you.”
So then he asked the folks who had raised their hands to come to the front. I slid out of my spot and walked forward. I’d been to my daughter’s baptism in the Lutheran church when she was a baby, no problem I could handle that…
I didn’t know about Baptist churches.
But that is another story.
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