Having had no idea what to write about as I booted up the computer,
a recent picture of a famous actor came to mind and this is what
followed:
It's something that is peculiar to me and nowadays it happens more and more as more and more celebrities from my youth are photographed, and those photographs make their way into newspapers or on television. I'm sure that I notice their aging faces even more than most others do. I'll stare at the wrinkles or the gaunt faces. I'll then spend more than a few moments in a spontaneous meditation on this passage through life that all must take.
This isn't just a curiosity on my part, it's rather part of my Christian worldview. God has given man a mind that is capable of the most wondrous things, while at the same time the fall of man in the Garden of Eden provided us with proclivities to do and think the dumbest of things. Either way we have roughly seventy years on average to go back and forth in those endeavors. In that time, usually the earlier years, we are faced with the decision of whether or not to seek God.
Well, I don't need to describe the many and varied options for we all know them and most of us have lived one, two or even three of them. I myself had a mixture of humility and arrogance in my quest. I knew, being raised Roman Catholic, that there was a holy and righteous God, and I desired to know more of Him but I would attempt this in my way and in my own good time.
Sometime in early 1982 that simple quest began to grow into a passion of sorts. I would leave Mass on Sunday and gather the various Catholic newspapers from the church sanctuary. Then my wife and I would go home and I spread them out on the dining room table and read every word.....surely there were clues and maybe even answers in them. I don't even remember if we owned a Bible at the time but if we did I did not consult it.
The Academy Award winning film Chariots Of Fire made a great impression on me, so much so that I entered the viewing of it in my James Fixx's Runner's Day-by-Day Log and Calendar of March 5th, 1982. Who was this man....Eric Liddell? He spoke of God so very intelligently and with such a powerful reverence. Could this God that I was looking for be as knowable to me as He was to this Christian Olympic runner and missionary? If so....I desperately wanted that knowledge.
I began to regularly visit a local Christian bookstore, unfamiliar with literally everything in it. One day I picked up a paperback titled Evidence That Demands A Verdict by a writer named Josh McDowell. It was in outline form which encouraged me in that it was like a textbook....and since it was like a textbook then it must have facts, and that was what I was looking for. When I finished reading that book I was convinced that God did exist and that Jesus Christ was his son. I was also convinced that the Bible was no ordinary book.
I began asking questions of men who called themselves Born Again. They had been where I then was. Almost before I knew it I was calling Jesus my Lord and my Savior. If I had known then how long it would take before I fully understood what happened on that wooden cross, on that rocky hill outside of the walls of Jerusalem, and if I knew how many wrong turns I would make over many years, I might surely have become discouraged. If I knew then that I had been hanging over the precipice of hell all of my life, held above it only by a scarlet thread, I may have become too fearful to press on. If I had known then that in my evangelistic zeal that I was still only a summer soldier for Christ, protected by his grace in my infancy, I might have sank back and sought out the safest of havens. But I knew none of this. His Word was opened up just enough at that time for me to see, if only in part, the majesty of Christ.... know that I was forgiven and granted mercy....and this was indeed enough!
So today I almost stare at those faces of men and women, many of whom found a different kind of treasure, a treasure of fame and fortune. We, my then idols and myself, have aged together. They have either searched for God or have not.... had either weighed all of the evidence available to them or not....had either humbled themselves or not... and had either made a decision to fall at the foot of the cross on Calvary in humiliation, repentance and praise....or had chosen instead to enjoy the temporal treasures that this world can provide and hope for the best. Seventy years...sixty-six in my case... had gone by so quickly. I show that age on my face and feel it in my body, but they are glorious wrinkles and wonderful aches and pains for they evidence the nearness of seeing Christ in His fullness! I had not been given the riches and the fame that I earlier had so much desired. I had been given infinitely more valuable treasures.....mercy....and forgiveness....and the sure hope of eternity with the Kings of Kings!
It's something that is peculiar to me and nowadays it happens more and more as more and more celebrities from my youth are photographed, and those photographs make their way into newspapers or on television. I'm sure that I notice their aging faces even more than most others do. I'll stare at the wrinkles or the gaunt faces. I'll then spend more than a few moments in a spontaneous meditation on this passage through life that all must take.
This isn't just a curiosity on my part, it's rather part of my Christian worldview. God has given man a mind that is capable of the most wondrous things, while at the same time the fall of man in the Garden of Eden provided us with proclivities to do and think the dumbest of things. Either way we have roughly seventy years on average to go back and forth in those endeavors. In that time, usually the earlier years, we are faced with the decision of whether or not to seek God.
Well, I don't need to describe the many and varied options for we all know them and most of us have lived one, two or even three of them. I myself had a mixture of humility and arrogance in my quest. I knew, being raised Roman Catholic, that there was a holy and righteous God, and I desired to know more of Him but I would attempt this in my way and in my own good time.
Sometime in early 1982 that simple quest began to grow into a passion of sorts. I would leave Mass on Sunday and gather the various Catholic newspapers from the church sanctuary. Then my wife and I would go home and I spread them out on the dining room table and read every word.....surely there were clues and maybe even answers in them. I don't even remember if we owned a Bible at the time but if we did I did not consult it.
The Academy Award winning film Chariots Of Fire made a great impression on me, so much so that I entered the viewing of it in my James Fixx's Runner's Day-by-Day Log and Calendar of March 5th, 1982. Who was this man....Eric Liddell? He spoke of God so very intelligently and with such a powerful reverence. Could this God that I was looking for be as knowable to me as He was to this Christian Olympic runner and missionary? If so....I desperately wanted that knowledge.
I began to regularly visit a local Christian bookstore, unfamiliar with literally everything in it. One day I picked up a paperback titled Evidence That Demands A Verdict by a writer named Josh McDowell. It was in outline form which encouraged me in that it was like a textbook....and since it was like a textbook then it must have facts, and that was what I was looking for. When I finished reading that book I was convinced that God did exist and that Jesus Christ was his son. I was also convinced that the Bible was no ordinary book.
I began asking questions of men who called themselves Born Again. They had been where I then was. Almost before I knew it I was calling Jesus my Lord and my Savior. If I had known then how long it would take before I fully understood what happened on that wooden cross, on that rocky hill outside of the walls of Jerusalem, and if I knew how many wrong turns I would make over many years, I might surely have become discouraged. If I knew then that I had been hanging over the precipice of hell all of my life, held above it only by a scarlet thread, I may have become too fearful to press on. If I had known then that in my evangelistic zeal that I was still only a summer soldier for Christ, protected by his grace in my infancy, I might have sank back and sought out the safest of havens. But I knew none of this. His Word was opened up just enough at that time for me to see, if only in part, the majesty of Christ.... know that I was forgiven and granted mercy....and this was indeed enough!
So today I almost stare at those faces of men and women, many of whom found a different kind of treasure, a treasure of fame and fortune. We, my then idols and myself, have aged together. They have either searched for God or have not.... had either weighed all of the evidence available to them or not....had either humbled themselves or not... and had either made a decision to fall at the foot of the cross on Calvary in humiliation, repentance and praise....or had chosen instead to enjoy the temporal treasures that this world can provide and hope for the best. Seventy years...sixty-six in my case... had gone by so quickly. I show that age on my face and feel it in my body, but they are glorious wrinkles and wonderful aches and pains for they evidence the nearness of seeing Christ in His fullness! I had not been given the riches and the fame that I earlier had so much desired. I had been given infinitely more valuable treasures.....mercy....and forgiveness....and the sure hope of eternity with the Kings of Kings!
