"Answers..............................."

I stood on my front steps the other night watching my youngest grandson wrestle with the neighbor’s bulldog pup and thought to myself how simple life can be at times. The boy had no worries at the moment, no thoughts or questions concerning the world around him. His grandfather, on the other hand, contemplating as always, soaking up the fun taking place in front of him and thinking about the complexity of the journey in its entirety, the mystery of it all if one only takes their head out of the sand to consider it. Easy enough, I suppose, for any of us, as Christians, to formulate a doctrinal foundation that supposedly assures us of an entrance into Heaven and then, by “faith”, just hang on as the days come to us. All things are in His hands. Just trust, believe, and keep walking. What that translates to, however, is religion, not relationship, something that Jesus, Himself, consistently warns us, within the red-letter portion of the Bible, to avoid. Questions? I’ve got a lot of them: Are my loved ones gone on, the rest of the world, for that matter, doomed to everlasting torment merely because they were never baptized, never proselytized to anybody’s individual dogma? Is Christ about the Book or is the Book about Christ? Why tragedy? Where is “sense” in the middle of all that the ecclesiastical community, as a whole, would have us swallow?... For me, it comes down to a place much akin to Noah’s canine encounter, a connection wherein all the interrogatives fade away and all I know is the joy of breathing. Salvation is not secured by who and what I am, but by who He is within me. Assurance is not earned by my credentials, but through His willingness to meet with me in spite of my mess, grace not a blanket dismissal of it all, but a temporal privilege as we talk things over……