80 Happy Easter

My new blog on premiere issues is so much fun. Yesterday I pulled out the March 4, 1974 issue of People. The 30th anniversary issue to meet the needs of 3.7 million people interested in celebritology is about to hit the stands and mailboxes--and huge birthday celebrations are running from now through November.

I’m 30 years old too--in Christ. My testimony doesn’t have interesting, salacious details or sins. No, I was 34 years old, had everything I’d ever wanted in life, and realized one day in March looking out my dining room window at the lovely homes on our street, that I had nothing. One morning at our church coffee hour a friend and former pastor in the Church of the Brethren, Joe Kimmel, said to me “I’ll bet you wanted to kick God in the knee,” after I’d told him about the deaths of our two oldest sons. Funny how a simple remark, intended as empathy (he and his wife had had some dramatic health problems with their children) can point you down the road to a life changing new birth.

It wasn’t that I didn’t believe in God--I knew he was out there somewhere keeping trains and planets from colliding--it wasn’t that I didn’t believe in Jesus, the great moral teacher I’d heard about all my life. The man who had lived a few centuries back telling people how to live. But close enough to kick him in the knee? That image rattled around in my head for days. A God so close I could personally be mad at him. What a concept.

At the same time that Spring, I was in a women’s Bible study with Ruth Foster, a program director at a local Christian radio station. I tuned in to listen to her, and heard some really strange teachings and music. I started listening 24/7, although in those days, we didn’t have that expression. What I found so fascinating were two concepts I’d never heard in the main-line churches I’d been attending. 1) Jesus is God. 2) I personally was a sinner.

You’d have to be there, I guess, because I can almost hear you saying, “So? What’s new?” Well, it was news to me! The guy I thought was a great teacher and moral leader who encouraged us to demonstrate for the ERA, hide migrants or set up food pantries was the God of the Universe. And sin wasn’t only OUT THERE in government programs, dishonest corporations, and the military, it was sitting right there on my heart, growing, developing, reaching out to all I touched.

I listened to the solution--as presented by various speakers on WCVO--many times. I even took notes. It really sounded just too bizarre to be believed. If Jesus was God, (and I had about 30 seconds of wavering belief on that one), then his work on the cross could cover my sinfulness. Problem was--I couldn’t think of any sins to ask forgiveness for--I mean, none so big that I’d ask someone to die for them! I was, after all, a “good” person. Since the only sin I could think of was living my life without Jesus, that’s the one I finally confessed and asked forgiveness for. I got into the Kingdom on the Big One.

It almost makes me smile now--the simplicity of my ignorance. Isn’t God great? He honored the 30 seconds of belief I had and he honored my thinking a huge sin was so little and insignificant.

And that's one of the most valuable things I learned at that church, in that Bible Study where I met Ruth. The leader, Ad Carr, told us many times, God doesn't grade on a curve. Although I didn't learn it there, I now know big sinner, little sinner, we all need Christ's work on the cross to bring us into fellowship with the God who loves us.