"Evolution....................."

My granddaughter came home with me after mid-week service Wednesday evening, bringing with her two of her friends, all of them excited about an overnight sleep-over and the prospect of an afternoon pool part today with the boys. Sitting with them in Bob Evans this morning and listening to their conversation while we waited for breakfast, for a few moments I went back in my mind thirty-some years to when our girls were that young, an old man and his memories. I do that a lot and in more ways than one… Nearly four decades ago I stepped into a born-again experience with Christ through an introduction to old-time holiness, possessing no knowledge of Biblical credos, having had no previous religious indoctrination (at least nothing that broke through to an understanding of basic beliefs). My theology started at square one, a mixture of sermons fed me from the pulpit and a stagger down the path as life, itself, (along with the Holy Ghost) directed and corrected my reasoning of it all. In truth, the process hasn’t changed all that much. I learned a long time ago that it matters not who delivers the message, it’s coming forth out of an imperfect vessel, one capable of twisting things to his own perspective; and, in like manner, it’s also being poured into a similar receptacle. Nonetheless, there is a Reality, there is a Third member of the Trinity, who manifests Himself here and there in the journey, often, in such a way as to remind us of such facts. My favorite high-school dictionary defines the word “holy” as being “evoking and meriting veneration or awe”. To me, that says “when God shows up, men fall prone in His presence”. Sometimes I think the present-day church needs to learn that all over again……