A first shot...

One of the topics I’m sure I will cover continually over the next few years is a journey that started, I guess, at birth. Of course, I don’t recall ever consciously starting it, but God does.

Growing up without a church experience never much occurred to me until I knew what a church experience was. That largely came through a friendship in High School with Chris Ryder. Chris and his family were members at Smyrna Presbyterian Church outside of Waynesboro, and I started going with them as a teenager. I certainly felt connected with God, but didn’t really have the discipline or maturity to push further.

A few years later, I became enamored with a pretty girl, whom was later gracious enough to say “I do.” Vickie Arehart, now Craft, and her parents were regular 8:30 worship service attenders at Tinkling Spring Presbyterian Church ( www.tinklingspring.org ) and I came along. I felt an immediate sense of being home in that place, and the pastor then, Rev. Dr. Fred Holbrook, became a trusted friend. The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn, and soon enough I finished a new member class and joined the church.

Over the almost 17 years I’ve been a member, I have tried to immerse myself in the many activities offered there, and not a one has been a disappointment. Going on mission trips, working with youth groups, and stepping out of my comfort zone time after time has always been rewarding. God works in you when you let him.

I guess that’s more or less the lesson. The most powerful force, beyond all our collective imaginations, chooses to let us make the choice. The grace of the cross is offered, not forced. We have the opportunity in every moment to choose to follow Christ, or to satisfy our worldly desires instead. Sure is hard sometimes, huh? I struggle all the time, every single day, and yet time and again I find myself asking for forgiveness and starting again. Until recently, I had it in my mind that was the hardest part, the starting over part. Well, I was wrong. That happens more than I care to admit, too, but that’s another story.

I found after a lot of reflection and prayer that I understood that God forgives me continually. What I had not been able to do in a lot of ways was forgive myself. Despite growing older and acquiring the world’s wisdom, I just never took the time to acknowledge that my mistakes were in the past. Time to move on. Time to reform, so to speak.

My prayer for you is that you forgive yourself. That’s harder in a lot of ways than forgiving others. It’s funny how it gets easier the more you do it. Resentment and anger are powerful drugs.  Start inside, work outside, then look upward. Or as another friend, Pastor Derwin Gray told me- inward, outward, upward. Give it a shot. It changes everything.