Getting Confirmed
I don't like to put my religious life out there on the internet, but I feel like this is something that I should post, just because I have a speech and I kind of want more people to hear it. Check it out below the break.
“God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising...”
--Terry Pratchett.
This is one of my favourite quotes from Good Omens, a book that I have just recently begun reading. The book, actually isn’t about Christianity. It’s about good and bad, and the thing in between.
But enough about the book. That’s not really what I meant to start talking about.
I grew up in the church, starting with Marietta First United Methodist Church. It was there that I got my foundation of who Christ and God were/are. It was never really a question about whether or not they were real. I just kind of accepted it. Sunday School, church day care, that one first grade class that taught us HOW to attend church, it was all part of what I was supposed to do.
Then we moved, and I started to wonder. I wondered if God would still watch over me, despite the fact that I was in Japan. Please keep in mind, I was 7. TUC was a blessing. It was probably the biggest blessing and sign of God’s love that I have ever seen with my own two eyes. As many of you know, with my little brother Jack came months of pain and illness and hospitals. But TUC was always there. Whether it was the Men’s Group or the congregation praying for us, or even people coming to our house and staying a while to talk. This was all wonderful. I mean, not the situation, but just the fact that people cared so much. But despite how many people told me that God was with my and watching over me, I couldn’t help but doubt them.
How do you see your mother in a hospital bed, how do you see your little premie brother in an incubator, and still think that God is there? That God cares? That He still loves you? It was too much for my then 8 year old brain to comprehend. Yes, they were safe and getting better, but there had still been pain and illness in the first place. “How could he have let this happen?” was all that went through my mind. I wasn’t angry with God. How could one be angry with the deity that had kept you safe and blessed you with a house and money and food and people that cared about you? Even at that young age, I was well aware that we had been blessed, and that we were blessed to be a blessing.
So, we moved to Korea, which was tearful. I remember not wanting to go up to the front of the sanctuary for the sayonara blessing because I didn’t want to leave. For a long time, we were searching for a church to go to. Every Sunday we were somewhere different. Finally, we settled at Onnuri English Ministry. But even then, I held on to the doubt, the doubt that God didn’t care as much as He initially did or as much as my Sunday school teachers had said he did.
It wasn’t until a very fateful mission trip in Epworth, GA a few years ago that I felt, I don’t know what to call it. Full?
I was on a mission trip with MFUMC and we went to, well, it was basically a concert. It was a church concert. So, this band, Veridia, came on and played some of their music (Think Hillsong United on steroids.) and everybody was super pumped. I may have forgotten to mention, there wasn’t a person in that giant tent thing over 21. This guy comes on, his name was Lucas Ramirez. He was the exec for the GP, which was the non-profit that held the church concert-things. He basically talked about irony.
Every morning at 9 and in the afternoon at 3, they would sacrifice a sheep to honor the covenant made between Abraham and God. You know the one, Genesis 15?
5 He took him outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring[d] be.”
6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.
7 He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeansto give you this land to take possession of it.”
8 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?”
9 So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.”
This was the act, the ceremony, of the covenant. And on verse 18,
18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram and said, “To your descendants I give this land, from the Wadi[e] of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates— (etc. etc.)
Anyway, every morning at 9 and in the afternoon at 3, they would sacrifice a sheep to honor the covenant made between Abraham and God. Where we are now is about 2000 years or so later in the story. There were three priests, one ready to kill the sheep, one ready to blow the shofar, and one waiting at the sundial, waiting to tell the other two when to do their jobs. At either 9 or 3, on the dot, they would kill the lamb and sprinkle its blood on the altar. At the same time, they would blow the shofar. The blood said, “God, remember your promise!” The shofar sounded to remind the town, the nation, the world, that God would rescue them.
At the very same time, Jesus was on the cross. It was about 5 minutes to 3. As 3 got closer and closer, the people waited. They waited for that shofar to sound, they waited for Christ’s death. Just before 3, the sky goes black. It’s 3. The ceremony is being done. The shofar sounds. It cries out to God, “Remember us! Remember what you promised us, that you’d send a Messiah!” Jesus’ last words were, “It is finished!” Do you know what he meant by that? He fulfilled that promise that God, that HE made to Abraham. He died on that cross for our sins.
It was this speech, this sermon, that awakened me to what Christ had really done for us. It was on that day that I realized how much of a sacrifice had been made. I realized just how much God loves us.
These days, my questions for him have been more geared towards the “Why?” and “What?” categories. What part do I play in your plan, God? What did the hard year that was 2009-10 have to do with shaping our lives? Why? Just in general, why?
God does not play dice with the universe, and I feel that that’s something that even a few adults could stand to learn.
Thoughts? Leave them in the comments and I'll get to them as soon as I can.
Cheers, DFBTA, and Good Night.
Anna Grace
