Still Searching
Read: 2 Timothy 3:14-17
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word; and the Word was with God, and the word was God. NRSV
Some of you may know that I have been searching for answers for almost my entire life, ever since my mother died. Was she in heaven, was there a heaven, would I ever see her again. I knew she was very involved on the altar society and that she went to church every week, and made sure we said our nightly prayers. But I didn’t know about her beliefs, about her relationship with God. I guess in the 60’s those deep topics weren’t things adults discussed with their 9 year old children. As I grew older I still had these same questions and more and so I began searching for answers.
I looked everywhere. I looked to my religious friends, I went on retreats, I went to Catholic churches, Baptist churches, Protestant churches. I took religion classes in college. I talked to nuns, priests and rabbis; Muslims, Buddhists and atheists. The more people I talked to the more confused and unclear I became. At one point I even joined the Mormon Church because they had baptism for the dead and I figured if I found the answers I could “stand in” for my Mom if she hadn’t done it right. I looked everywhere except for one place.
As I write this I think of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. She went through so much in her quest to get back to Kansas. The flying monkeys, the nasty apple trees, that wicked witch, the miles and miles and miles of yellow brick road and in the end the power to get her home was right there with her. Those ruby red slippers had been on her feet the whole time but she didn’t know the power they held.
Well all the years I have spent searching I too have had the power available to me but I didn’t know it either. It was my Bible.
When I first started in the Disciple I Bible Study class I found the reading interesting and the history fun but it was really nothing more then I could have gotten from the Discovery channel. But as the weeks went by, something changed; it wasn’t overnight, but gradually. I was no longer reading a history book, I was beginning to understand the Bible as God speaking out to us and his message is very simple and clear. He is telling us that he loves us and will take care of us if we love and trust him.
At the end of Disciple I class we identified gifts we saw in each other. Many of the people in the class gave me the gift of teacher. I have also been called a learner. I love to learn and I will exhaustively research a question until I find the answer. So it’s odd that for all these years as I searched I never turned to the Bible. It’s like looking for the answer to a tax question without using the Internal Revenue Code. It’s stunning to me that no one ever pointed it out or that I didn’t realize it for myself.
Now that the class is over I still don’t have all the answers and I know I never will but at least I am finally looking in the right place. The other big difference is that while I am still searching it’s for something different. I am no longer searching for the answers to the questions I carried with me from my childhood. Now I’m searching for a closer relationship with God.
During Lent try to find time every day read your Bible. It is a precious gift, as precious as those ruby slippers and much more powerful.
Cathy Lorenz
No comments:
Post a Comment