An Exploration of Faith
In a happy marriage, both of us with thriving careers, our lives were upended with a single doctor’s visit for my wife’s flu-like symptoms. The diagnosis was a terminal cancer that ended her life in just over 3 months.
At her bedside, in the wee hours of the morning, I came to the end of myself. Waiting to see if each breath was her last, I begged God to have mercy on me and he filled me with the assurance of his presence and love.
The intensity of that surrender, and the beauty of her departure from this life, launched an exploration of faith that has been unending. I’ve stumbled around, sometimes stupid, or cruel. I’ve confused organization for community, and power for holiness, but I’ve always come back to the pursuit of a real relationship with my God.
To have value, what someone offers doesn’t have to be perfect. It doesn’t have to be measurably better than the offering of others, or the proclamation of true enlightenment. The value doesn’t lie in the teaching, it lies in the learning. My simple prayer is that something in my words speaks to you and draws you to your own understanding and experience of reality of faith.
A Place to Share
This site is a place to share the experiences and realities of faith. Initially I will share writings, stories, and some understandings of specific scriptures. As I feel prompted, I may share prayers and worship.
In the right time, the hope is for a community sharing faith, experiences, prayers, and worship through all of life’s joys and struggles.
I’ve known I would write since coming to the faith, and yet I felt restrained in many ways until now. I surely began ignorant, suffering from a self-centered perspective, but I’m not suddenly so different now than say a year ago.
What has changed from when I stumbled around, is that I strive to understand that God knows best, both in the what and the when. I follow his promptings to the best of my ability, and it seems to me that now is the time.
Fostering Connections
In this age of the online and virtual, in this time of laying low to avoid exposure, ‘where’ is very interesting. In the virtual, each of us is somewhere, and it can feel like anywhere or like it’s all right here.
I chose the Internet precisely because of its great reach and how it allows those far apart to come together. I spend each day in remote support of distributed computer systems, working with people all over the United States, and across the world and at its best it feels like we are side by side.
Social media was always intended to unite us, but we’ve seen it strain and destroy the relationships it was intended to kindle and strengthen.
But it needn’t be so. If we’re blessed, this space can revive the ingathering power of the web and help us to be one wherever we are.
The apostle John tells us “In the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” In Genesis, it describes God speaking our world into existence. Words are at the heart of what distinguishes us from any other animal. But words are not the only way we create, not the only way we bring creation or destruction.
In this virtual space, words, music, and myriad visual arts can bring us glimpses of the power and glory of God and God’s creation. I pray that this start in a design and structure, with ideas in words, explodes with the creative forces of God’s children.
Hope is a Guidepost
This site begins in a time that for many Americans is shaking the foundations of life as they have known it. A year into the Covid-19 pandemic it is sinking in that we have another 6 months to a year before this disease and the risk of infection recedes.
As I write, we are on the threshold of 400,000 deaths from the virus in the US. In many locations the hospitals are overrun. The danger no longer seems far away, 2 members of my wife’s family are in the hospital and on ventilators.
Regardless of your political beliefs, you know that America is polarized to the point of violence. Relationships of decades are suddenly ending. Families are fracturing. For many, anxiety and despair are overwhelming. This didn’t begin with an election and it won’t end with one.
Though these events affect me, I have hope is a guidepost, peace as my foundation, and the joy that springs from love every day. I believe that this is as possible for you as it is for me, and I expect evermore to flow from the abundance of my God.
I lived a long time before I found this peace. I believe that it is only by sharing openly, the private and personal experiences that bring us to faith and to peace, that others will be drawn to the faith and find that same peace that passes all understanding. My prayer is for everyone to feel the weight of this world lifted from their shoulders and replaced with the peace of God.
