Filling Your Emptiness -- Your New Life
Chapter 4
Visitors at the Door
Late one afternoon, two visitors came to the door and introduced themselves as from the “little church a couple of blocks over.” I told them to wait while I called my wife to the door, as I was not interested in talking to them, for they had nothing of interest to me.
Church, on the few occasions I could remember attending, had never had anything that interested, motivated, or captured my attention. On the contrary, my memories were of embarrassment, disillusionment, or outright pious rejection.
As a child, it was obvious my clothes did not meet the “standard” for that venue. There was embarrassment and snickering by those other little “Christian” members.
Being told to sit in the back of the special services (Christmas, Easter) so the nicely dressed children members could be upfront was a tearful memory.
In such a small community, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, it is devastating to have anyone, but especially the “righteous,” shake their heads quietly and write you off as having “no hope for someone like you!” Sadly, the Pharisees were alive and well.
As an adult, upon any visit, it was surely and obviously a cold shoulder when no one even ventured to provide a greeting and avoided eye contact. Even at one point, our babysitter’s husband told me bluntly to my face I would not be accepted at his church because my hair was too long!
I believed there was a God and, through my early dysfunctional family life, had many times yelled questions to him without replies, answers, or comfort. I believed Jesus was a loving revolutionary that was counterculture. I identified with his underdog status. I believed he was truly love immaculate in his day.
Curiosity
Toward the end of the following week, my wife sheepishly approached me. She asked if we could attend the final revival church service of that week at that church our previous week’s visitors had invited her.
Any previous such discussion or dialogue would have caused a disrupting argument and ruin of the evening. I did not want the day to be ruined, so I surprised her with agreement, figuring a service at such a small church could not last that long and would help her overcome her such periodic “spiritual spasm.”
Upon entering the tiny church, to my recollection, we were directed to the nursery for our two-year-old son.
Returning to the sanctuary, we entered the small room of three aisles with worn long wooden pews covered by worn pew-length crimson velvet cushions. Many of the back pews were roped off to supposedly force the attendees to sit closer to the front.
The rope caused me no restraint. I removed it and entered a far pew to the left. We sat about midway in what was to be an otherwise empty pew. I surveyed the interior to be aware of the exit route.
After a bit of old hymnal singing, a pastor of Victoria Baptist Church of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, walked to the pulpit and began talking. Surprisingly, he was a young man with a smile. My attention had been captured.
The speaker surprised me, as I had expected a long, boring sermon from old, front-to-end Bible verses delivered with heavy brows. It was nothing of the sort.
He told the story of Jesus Christ, supposedly the loving son of God, who, out of his love, sacrificed himself for me to provide an opportunity to accept God’s eternal forgiveness and love and abundant life.
This was a story I had never fully heard. I thought only one person loved me.