In the Wilderness
To begin with I have to say that I am a christian – I know that it may not always so given my sometimes perceived wicked ways – especially when one considers I am sitting in a bar writing this watching horse racing. But my Father, despite the rift between us, is a minister. My mother saw to it that, at least as youth, I was in Sunday school and church almost every Sunday morning. As I have gotten older though, I have personally attended church less and less often. A large part of that, which I have noted before, is that I just have issues with a lot of organized religion, including christian churches (that is another blog for another day). In a nutshell I feel like I am a lot closer to God on Sundays out working with horses, playing with my dog, or just taking a walk through the woods – though a ride is even closer to God in my opinion. My point to all this is that sometimes I just am drawn or even almost compelled to attend a church service. I have even talked to a couple of my favorite ministers, who I truly feel are godly men with the spirit of what being a christian is truly about up on them, about just my thoughts and they truly do understand my take on things and why I am not going to likely ever be the type that will be in the church pew on a every Sunday morning. Even now as I think on this I regret that I had thought about going to church this morning, but did not, though in all honesty, it more a friends thought then my own. A few months back, when I was at an all time low in my life – perhaps even the worse one that I have had – I felt like I really needed to get to a pew for a Sunday morning. I felt like that God was moving me that way, that there was a message of perhaps consolation that was going to be had just for me. In my weird ways I know that if God truly wanted to speak to me I need not necessarily make a huge trip and go to a church that I knew, and honestly at the time, I really just needed to hear things without facing people who I knew (ironically a curse of being a PK is that everyone knows you in any of the churches you have ever remotely been associated with and knows all your life history and always wants to know the latest and sometimes you just need the anonymous support you can find in a church). So I found myself entering a small church with congregation that probably numbered in the high 30′s on average not far from where I was residing at the time. The message that morning was titled “In the Wilderness” and used as the scripture Mosses and company being lost to wander in the wilderness for forty years. The message was actually part one of three, but the general message was that sometimes when we are feeling lost and abandon and things just are not right that God is sometime preparing us for those things that are yet to come. This may especially be true when we fell like why me? Why am I being testing in such a way. Now, without going into the details of the message any more than that, let me just say, that I felt like God was talking directly to me and fully had guided me right to that particular church that particular Sunday morning. But I have to wonder sometimes, and here in is one of my two big problems with my faith (again the second one will be another blog one day), as a scientific logical based reasoning man, is it not that I made the message fit? I mean, was it just like the fortune-teller at the country county fair who says just enough vague information to let me feel in the blanks and draw my own conclusions as to how that fits my situation and hence make it feel like the minister was also speaking as an instrument of God directly to me? And right now, I fully admit, in the back of my head I am thinking of that Ron White comedy sketch, “This guy is good – real good,” when he just nailed Ron with are you sitting naked on a bean bag chair? But fundamentally I have to believe that was not mere chance, that I truly was guided there. After all there have been way to many times when I have prayed about something and had the prayer answered, most often in a favorable light to my own well being. And fundamentally, that right there, is why I do believe.
Very well put, I really enjoyed reading this, you are a very intelligent man, just wanted you to know that.
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