This is my story; how I approach life and faith the way I do and it all begins with how God found me. In order to start my story I have to tell you briefly about my parents. They found each other as kindred souls who left the Christian Church as many have citing that the Church was a tomb of spiritual death filled with hypocrites. It was not that they had given up on God just the houses that allegedly had been built by God’s grace and love. When they had me faith, God, church were not a conversation piece, let alone part of our routine.
Work, play, rest. Life as we knew it. Then God sent Judy.
She was the agent that God used to plant the seed in my mom’s heart that the disconnect she felt in life was due to her ignoring and running from God. Judy wasn’t abusive with in your face bible over the head damn you heathen stuff. Judy was love, patience, and walking to the ends of the earth with someone she didn’t know from Eve which allowed my mother to turn to God and say Jesus you are my Lord. My mother began to attend worship services and bringing me along. The name, I don’t remember. The “brand” I don’t know, nor do I feel it is relevant. It feed my mother’s hungry soul the light and hope that she had been missing.
My father was not a fan. He was not interested in going back to church. My mother asked and prayed and asked and prayed. This went on for a couple of years and then Billy Graham came to the North West. My mother seized this opportunity by asking my father to attend one of the evening programs. My father relented when I asked him to go (that piece of the story was shared with me by my mother and confirmed by my father, I don’t remember it). The Spirit of God moved and my father turned to God that night after hearing Billy Graham and said to Jesus “You are my Lord.”
As for me, I can tell you this. It was a rainy day in Tacoma, Washington. I was sitting in the back of my parents’ Pontiac looking out the window as we were headed somewhere. It was then and there I felt that God was real, that Jesus was alive, and I said “Jesus come into my heart.”
I don’t know what kind of journey you have been on, but I have seen and heard some crazy ugly things done all in the name of God. When I meet someone or talk to someone who says “I don’t mind God, but I can’t stand the Church,” I remember Judy. I thank God for Judy as I try to share Christ with an attitude of love, patience and a willingness to walk to the ends of the earth with a stranger.
Rev. Shawn J. Smith 