"Sesame Street........................."

The Sunday evening service at church featured an appearance by CeCe Winans, which means, if prior experience holds any water, the sanctuary was packed to over-flowing and the volume on the music coming forth was turned up to ear-splitting. To each their own. This old man, however, had no desire to go. I ask myself sometimes if aging has somehow turned me into a grump; but surely, if that were so, the condition would involve more than just a dislike of where Pentecost has gone since the mid-eighties. In helping my granddaughter write a report on Mark Twain, we learned the famous author, a Presbyterian, held little respect for Christianity at large, noting “The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled.” He believed (or so he said at one time) in an almighty God, but not in messages, revelation, or the Holy Scripture. His theology evolved out of his own experiences and the suffering that his family knew. He could not bring himself to accept Hell as a possibility awaiting some men. His problem, as I see it, was his probable lacking of a born-again connection, birthed in a childhood religious routine that failed to ground him in something greater than a mental totem pole carved out of his own understanding. We all change as we journey down the path. My own doctrinal thinking differs greatly from where I stepped into this back in ’72; but, while much that the church taught got adjusted by life as it came to me, that which initially stepped into me, took up residence within me, has kept me anchored in the midst of the storm. He, alone, not my mental concept of who He is, remains my faith. When “grouchy” sits up, the Holy Ghost tends to grab him by the seat of his trousers and remind him he’s not the only guy in the pew……