""Union Terminal...................."

Forty-one years ago this past March 27th I knelt in my living room and cried out for help, the father of three girls, the husband of one wife, and failing miserably in both roles. What came to me there, in all my despair, was an encounter wherein there was this unexplainable feeling of having suddenly been cleansed, so much weight lifted from me that it seemed as if walking was a new experience to be learned all over again. My knowledge of Christ was minimal, neither of my parents having been church goers and the Bible a book previously never opened. The moment was pivotal, therefore, not in any doctrinal definition I could apply to it, the truth of it being a permanent re-connection, a well to which I could return again and again, not yet fully in my understanding of the event. The journey forward would teach me, of course, sermon after sermon delivered from the pulpit, several shelves stuffed with the works of numerous well-known authors, the need to dig into the Word for myself an important part of a process wherein a theology was developed out of life as it came to me. Yet, if the truth be told, my belief, as held in my mind, is by no means an unchangeable, dogmatic picture of God. The Creator can’t be put into a box; and if we approach Him in such manner, all we have is religion. Jesus said He came to give us “life”… This, then, is the message I shared with the men at the rescue mission last night, the idea that salvation is not a matter of some singular, denominational credo we own and attempt to force-feed others, but an inner reconnection wherein two become one, if only momentarily. His crucifixion and the resurrection bought for us a “filling station”, an oasis where, even though we’ll never entirely conquer the enigma of it all, we can nonetheless be assured in the reality of His promise; and, from that point, it’s a stumble down the path, but one wherein we are anchored to Him and each other……