GOD'S LOVE

I have a friend who longs for the sense of companionship and fellowship that she sees in our church but has rarely been able to experience herself. I can understand her desire and her frustration.

There was a time when I was on the outside looking in, too. I was not raised in the church, although my parents did occasionally send me to church and Sunday School. They never went themselves, and I never felt like I fit in. It also seemed to me that you needed to believe in Jesus or you didn’t belong there, and believing in Jesus seemed like an impossible intellectual leap for me. Jesus – born of a Virgin who was visited beforehand by an angel, a healer and a performer of miracles, an obedient son of God who chose to be crucified to save me from my sins, who then rose from the dead and is somehow still with us.

I hadn’t killed anyone or done anything wrong. Why did I need someone to die for me? It sounded like a fairy tale. I do remember being touched in some way in one of those visits to a church. I remember deciding to read the Bible, a red leather Bible that my grandmother had given me, (probably King James version). I was a great reader (still am), but I didn’t get it at all. Of course, I started in the beginning and it did not read like a novel. It didn’t produce any sense of worshipfulness, only confusion, and I gave up.

I must have given up going to church, too. I clearly remember cleaning out my books once when I was moving from Texas to California. I let that red Bible go, thinking, with sadness and regret, “I guess religion is just not for me, so I won’t need this.”

But God had other ideas, and now here I am a member of this wonderful church where the fellowship and service have been a great healing for me – and a great joy. I enjoy watching parents bringing their children, sometimes grandparents and parents and children all together, at the children attending Sunday School without anyone asking whether they believe (just all of us loving them all). What a wonderful start they are getting. And I see the way we welcome visitors no matter where they are on their faith journey. And I am so grateful for our church.

I know from my own experience that God is always reaching out for us, like the sun is always shining. We may only see the clouds, or choose to shut the drapes, but the sun is always there. As Jim Noland said earlier this year in his Sunday School class on the Methodist view of baptism, “Baptism of children is a symbol that God’s love is extended to us before we are even aware of it.”

Indeed, God’s love is extended to us before we are even aware of it. Another way to say it is: Just because you are not yet aware of it does not mean it isn’t there. So I remind my friend that God’s love is there for her, and I pray for her, and I visualize the sun of God’s love shining on her, blessing her and healing her. I am confident that if it can change for me, it can change for her, too.

— Nancy Searls

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist