"Seniority............................."

Beth and I drove over to a car dealership yesterday evening to conduct the final transaction on our purchasing the first new automobile we’ve bought in nearly thirty years. The experience has changed somewhat in the interim. Human nature has not. When it came down to the nitty-gritty of putting our signatures on the dotted line, the fellow in front of us “was prepared”, as he put it, to offer us an extended warranty for only fifteen hundred dollars. When I replied in the negative, he immediately reduced his price to twelve. “No,” I countered again; and he asked me to make him an offer. Another decline on my part brought him to under a thousand. Finally the fellow was convinced of my reluctance to accept his generosity. In getting there, however, all he gained was my opinion of his character, having just tried to smooth-talk me out of that much money… A few years back, Jodie Foster starred in “Contact”, a story about man’s search for other life in the universe and finally being successful in the attempt (if one considers finding “heaven” to be no more than another planet out there as having fulfilled the mission at hand). For me, as a fan of science fiction, it was entertaining until the woman steps out of the spaceship and is greeted by her deceased father. It was a bit of a stretch for me at that point. What has stayed with me about the movie, mostly, is its choice for a title. I like the word, believing it does indeed express what at least a part of what faith is all about, a piece of what Christianity embraces and yet what many who profess membership therein have left out of the contract. The Creator of all that there is has taken up residence in me. That connection holds my life and without it I am dead. While it does not ensure my walk, decisions yet mine to make, yet that “knot in my belly” tying me to Him, is the most important part of who I am no matter where I am or what I am doing. “Business” may be “business” and “church” may be “church”, but “born-again” is also “born-again” and ought to trump the other two……