Do You Believe All That Stuff?

After missing church for several weeks, it was great to attend today and see all the familiar, smiling faces again and to be welcomed by the warmth and friendliness of these lovely people. I didn’t realize how much I’d missed them.

 

Regretfully, the more Sundays I miss, the easier it becomes to keep missing. Normally, if I miss one Sunday, I feel guilty, two – and I feel twice as guilty and after missing three, I’m totally beating myself up; but after that, almost without realizing it, I find it suddenly becomes easier to find excuses not to go. I suppose that’s when Satan is pounding himself on the chest – cheering in triumph – because he’s won me and Mr. H. away from Sunday morning worship service.

Be that as it may, he doesn’t get to enjoy it very long. When one is brought up in the church, as I was, any victory Satan might manage to achieve in my life will be short-lived!

My parents took me to church as soon as I was born. My mother was a Sunday School teacher and my father was a deacon. When we visited my grandparents in another town, we went to church there, too. My grandfather was a deacon in his church and my aunt played the piano. No doubt about it! We were a church-going family. I must have been at least ten years old before I realized all families didn't go to church. Still, I was certain everyone believed in God.

But after I was grown, a friend once stunned me by asking, “Do you believe in God and Heaven and all that stuff?”

I said, “Yes I do. Don’t you?”

“I’m not sure,” she answered. “It seems so far-fetched.”

I hardly knew what to say, but finally managed to utter, “If I didn’t believe in God, I wouldn’t even bother getting up in the morning! There wouldn’t be anything to look forward to, would there?”

She shrugged and our conversation was interrupted by another friend. We never had a chance to finish it because, not long after that, she got a divorce and moved to another state and I lost track of her. But I've always wondered if she ever came to believe in “God and Heaven and all that stuff.”

My best instinct tells me she did.