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An excerpt from The Joyful Christian – Readings from C. S. Lewis

So perhaps we need to get to the point of Surrender.

Today’s guest post comes from Glynn Young of Faith, Fiction, Friends:

Glynn is a public affairs writer and the team lead for online strategy for a Fortune 500 company based in St. Louis. He and his wife Janet have two grown sons, one-daughter-in-law, one grandchild-to-be and a great dog. He bikes, reads a lot and has a bad tendency to cry at movies, particularly sappy ones. Glynn was born and raised in New Orleans, and received a B.A. in journalism from LSU and a Masters of Liberal Arts from Washington University in St. Louis.

That’s Glynn’s “official bio”. I would also like to add that he is a source of encouragement to so many of us here in the blogosphere and on twitter, and I appreciate him very much.

Now here’s Glynn on his adventures in Beaumont, Texas:

Before I graduated from college, I’d been to Texas three times: a family vacation to see Six Flags in Dallas/Ft. Worth; a journalism conference at the University of Texas in Austin; and my interview for a copy editor position at the Beaumont Enterprise. I got the job, graduated from LSU, and drove the next day to Beaumont.

I was not prepared for Texas, Beaumont or working for a newspaper, despite my two years of experience with LSU’s Daily Reveille. But I learned things, and quickly, through the people I met and worked with. It took a while for me to figure out that not everyone in Texas was, well, odd.

Receptionists are important; treat them well. The receptionist’s desk was the first you passed coming into the newsroom. And if you thought she wasn’t important, you learned right away how wrong you were. In this case, she was from southwestern Louisiana and had a Cajun accent. She was in her 40s, and dressed like she was in her teens – tight mini-skirt and white go-go boots, every day. And jet-black hair teased up approximately two feet. You always said hello. You never made a comment about how she was dressed or her hair. If you did, you faced a verbal shredding and general career demise (she was also the managing editor’s secretary).

Don’t use black shoe polish to dye your hair, especially when it rains. One of the reporters, of indeterminate age but likely in his 50s or early 60s, used black shoe polish for hair dye, or something that smelled like it. One day, he strolled calmly into the news room, having escaped a downpour outside. He was drenched. And his face, neck and jacket were stained orange. No one could say anything; we were all dumbstruck, until we realized that the polish or dye or whatever it was had run with the rain.

Be extraordinarily polite when you get insulted. The lady who did the religion page was a sweetheart, as nice and polite as she could be, except when anyone attempted to swipe a piece of her religious page turf. Then she was a pit bull. One day, I was walking my dog, and we meandered under Interstate 10 and into a really nice neighborhood. It wasn’t that my own neighborhood wasn’t nice; in fact, I referred to it as the posh Northway-Gaylynn luxury apartments. It was affordable on my $125-a-week salary, which meant I didn’t want my mother to see it. As my dog and I turned a corner, who did I run into but Religion Page Lady. We chatted briefly, and then she lowered her voice. “Be careful,” she said. “Those slums across the interstate – there are bad people who live there. Gangs. Drugs. Everything.” I never looked at my apartment in quite the same way again.

People can be nice and work well, no matter how they dress. My first day on the job, I met all of the people on the copy desk. Everyone seemed nice, but I was taken aback by the obituary writer. He had an Ivanhoe haircut. He always wore a flowing black velvet cape, regardless of the weather. And he had a matching black velvet choker. He was quiet, almost introverted, but he did a good job with obituaries and memorials. And a newspaper was willing to ignore odd clothes if someone could write a good obituary – the most read part of the newspaper in Beaumont. After a while, I got used to it, and totally freaked one day when he wore normal clothes. No one asked why, and he didn’t say. But we were shocked.

Be flexible. One Sunday night, the only staff on the desk was the slot man, me and an intern. We had three editions of the newspaper to put out – East Texas, Louisiana and Home, with deadlines about an hour apart. So you didn’t fool around. Except this Sunday night, the slot man gave us a job to do, one of the most difficult I ever faced at the newspaper: find a bar that was open. Now, this was Texas in the 1970s. An open bar on a Sunday night simply didn’t exist. But for two hours, the intern and I called every bar in the Beaumont-Port Arthur-Orange area. I finally found one, in a really rotten area. It didn’t matter. He was out of the door in a flash, saying he’d be back. The first deadline was an hour away. The intern and I looked at each other and got to work. The slot man didn’t come back. We put out all three editions of the paper that night. (Quiz: guess how many reporters wrote stories on Sunday? Answer: None = desperate copy editor and intern.)

Advancement can be rapid, often because you’re the last person standing. For some odd reason, staff turnover was rapid that summer, as in, people left. In droves. By the end of the summer, I was No. 2 on the desk. And because No. 1 was usually off seeking liquid refreshment, especially after the executives left for the day, I was de facto No. 1. I was not quite 22. It was way too much responsibility for such a little salary.

Work is both mundane and sublime, sometimes on the same day. Two headlines I recall writing: “B. Dalton’s opens in Parkdale Mall” (front page); “Agnew Resigns” (front page).

It was the era of Woodward and Bernstein toppling presidents, and Mideast nations imposing oil embargoes. But those things were transient. What lasted were lessons about shoe polish, velvet capes, mile-high hair and bars open on Sunday nights.

It was wonderful.

***

To read more from Glynn Young, visit him at Faith, Fiction, Friends and follow him on the twitter at @gyoung9751.

(Originally posted on 5/12/09)
I wrote this post last Saturday. I don’t know what came over me. I was sitting there watching my daughter skate, when I had an overwhelming desire to write about it. I wasn’t going to post it here. Mostly because it is such an obvious rip-off of Billy Coffey’s writing style, and it’s not like I even come close to being that kind of writer. So I sent it to Billy for grins. He asked me to post it. Actually, he TOLD me to post it. And you know me. I always do what I’m told. So, here’s my story, subtitled “Billy Coffey couldn’t come up with a title”.

***

I’m sitting on the top row of bleachers at an arena with a skating rink right smack in the middle. I was smart enough to wear jeans, not smart enough to wear sleeves. I am freezing. I hate being cold and I am very uncomfortable. Still, I find myself smiling.

I am watching my daughter attend her first ice skating party.

After 30 minute of professional instruction on how best not to crack your tailbone, the pack of ten 7 and 8 year old girls are released onto the open ice. They are cautious at first, clinging to the edge of the rink, gradually increasing in speed and confidence.

Eventually, my daughter makes her way to the center of the ice – a proud moment for her and for her mama. She is surrounded by her little friends, some cling to her and cause her to fall down, other more experienced skaters help her up and encourage her to keep going. Ten little girls with varying degrees of skill and natural abilities. Yet, there they are, skating together and having fun.

My journey of faith has been much like this little skating party. Still is.

When I first gave my life to Christ, I greatly benefited from the guidance of mature Christians. They lead me to which scriptures I should study first and were great examples of how to live. I was excited to join the party, but still clung cautiously to the safety and comfort of my old self. I suppose I still do that to a certain extent.

I was sort of like those little girls grabbing on for support. The problem with that is, if you grab onto someone who is only slightly more steady than you are, often you cause them to slip and fall as well. It is best to reach out to someone with a more mature, stable faith.

As I became more familiar with His Word and more involved in church, I became more confident. I was no longer clinging to others. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point I became one of the ones who helped people up. Not because I am even close to what most would consider a model Christian, but because I began to understand to depth of His grace. Having lived a life far apart from God, I hope this level of understanding gives me compassion for those who are struggling to understand it. That’s what I pray for, anyway.

I am venturing out to the middle of the rink, knowing that my friends will be there to help me up when I fall. Knowing that ultimately, God is in control. I’m proceeding with cautious optimism, with faith and hope in Him.

I will probably never be a great skater with impressive spins and jumps. The times in my life when I have allowed myself to believe that? That’s usually about the time I get plowed down by the Zamboni machine…

The Fellowship of the Believers
They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. All the believers were together and had everything in common. Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

(Acts 2:42-47)

It’s somewhat alarming to think about how many things I forget during the course of a normal day. The exact number eludes me; I forget how many things I’ve forgotten.

There are little things like forgetting where I’ve put my keys and wallet, and also big things like where I’ve put my children. I’ve forgotten appointments, to eat, to set my alarm, and, I noticed today, the fact that the oil needs to be changed in my truck.

The reasons for this may be many or one, depending upon whom I ask. My wife says it’s because I’m too tired, my friends say I’m too busy. Standard excuses for everyone with a short attention span. My mother, however, offered her own reason in her typically loving way:

“Your head’s too full of useless stuff,” she said. “There’s no room for things that matter.”

I thought about that and had to agree that what she said was at least partly right. I wasn’t sure if it were possible to have so much in my head that nothing else could get in, but I did have a lot of seemingly useless stuff stuck in there.

Stuff like the fact that a dragonfly can eat its own weight in thirty minutes. Or that Hollywood was founded by a man who wanted to build a community based on his conservative religious principles. Couvade is a custom in which a father simulates the symptoms of childbirth. Einstein went his entire life without ever wearing a pair of socks. I could go on.

Where I’ve managed to scrape up such tidbits of uselessness is beyond me. So is the manner by which I can remember that John Milton went blind because he read too late at night but not the name of someone I see at work every day.

The fact that I may simply be absent-minded occurred to me. It’s a distinct possibility. I come from a long line of absent-minded people. But that seems like a poor excuse in itself, and I keep thinking about what my mother said to me.

There’s little doubt that we all fill our lives with things that don’t matter, thereby sacrificing some of the things that do. Worry robs our faith, doubt our hope, and discord our love. But is that true for knowledge? Can we know too much for our own good?

Some people think so. I have friends who believe that faith is all they need, that thinking has done nothing but bring the world a whole lot of trouble. Communism, moral relativism, and Deal Or No Deal wouldn’t exist if someone hadn’t thought them up and ruined all of our lives. Sometimes I think that’s true, especially with Deal Or No Deal.

Faith is pretty much the most important thing a person can have. I also think having as much knowledge as possible easily breaks the top three. Because despite what everyone says, ignorance is not bliss. It’s more like a prison cell with walls of our own making.

Of all the inborn traits God sees fit to give us, few are exercised less than our curiosity. Spending some time with the nearest child will convince you that we’re all born with a probing mind. But that somehow gets lost as we get older. We all are tempted to reach a point where we just don’t care to know anything else. We already know enough about the world to realize it’s all spiraling downward. Why pile it on?

I get that, I really do. There are plenty of things I would rather not know, things that would keep my life chugging along rather nicely if they weren’t stuck on one giant playback loop in my brain.

But then there’s this to consider—our world really is a wonderful place. Flawed, yes. And a bit ugly in some places. But it’s also amazing and inspiring and so utterly almost-perfect.

The truth? I want to know everything. Even the stupid stuff. After all these years, I’m still curious. I still want to know. Because I’ve found that the more I can know about God’s world and the people who inhabit it, the more I can know about God and me. If that keeps me from checking my mail every once in a while or not realizing the truck’s almost out of gas, then so be it.

I think we would all be a little better off if we cracked a book every once in a while. There’s too much ignorance in this world. Life, like music, must contain several parts equally. There must be melody and beat. And there must be heart and head. That’s how we dance through our days. And God is a musician at heart.

Just ask the common housefly. Whose wings, by the way, hum in the key of F.

To read more from Billy Coffey, visit him at What I Learned Today and follow him on the twitter at @billycoffey.

Just in case I’ve failed to mention it, I’m a big fan of the twitter. It’s tons of fun, a great place to share and gather information, and best of all, it’s a great place to catch up with old cyber friends and meet some new ones. Bonnie is one of my new cyber friends. She’s a great writer who writes with a wonderful perspective on faith. Oh, and coffee…that woman loves her some coffee! Here’s Bonnie:

My son is not a kid with idle hands. From sunup to sundown, TJ puts the pedal to the metal the moment he jumps out of bed.

I’m one of those weary mommies whose child loses his naps by his second birthday.

Parents have advised me to institute “Quiet Time” in lieu of a nap.

“Mommee! Is it time yet?”

“Mommee! Can I come out now?”

After a few bangs on the door and some loud crashes resulting from acrobatic attempts from the bed to the floor, I give up.

Thankfully, there are a few special items I can wave in front of TJ, that arrests him to a screeching halt: books, TV and puzzles.

Books are usually consumed throughout the day, for the times I can’t play another round of crashing cars or making construction truck noises.

And because TV viewing is limited to one showing a day, it is saved for the late afternoons, when I’m prepping up a frenzy to put dinner on the table.

Ah, and then there are… puzzles!

There is something magical about dumping colorful pieces of wavy, irregularly shaped parts on the floor, moving them all around until …

Click!

The puzzle pieces lock in. An innie meets an outie.

Two jigsaw parts fit together and a little bit of mystery transforms into a recognizable fragment of the picture.

Watching my son hover over the pieces in quiet concentration, taking turns trying out different pieces, I can’t help but see myself in the same position as a child of faith.

Heavenly Daddy, this puzzle is too hard. I can’t figure out what piece goes where.

Puzzles take time, Bonnie. Be patient.

Oh, good! I think I’ve got it. Is this what you want me to do?

Well, maybe. For now, at least. But, the puzzle’s not done yet. You’re just working on the corners. Keep going.

Wait a minute! I thought I saw the piece that had some green and grey in it. Where did it go?

Why don’t you clean up around where you’re sitting. There’s too much clutter around you and it’s distracting.

I give up! It’s no use!

Just like I do when TJ teeters on the edge of giving up and drowning in Woe-Is-Me discouragement, God reaches His hand under dusty hiding places and swoops down next to me.

With a gentle touch to my shoulder, God hands me what I need , “Look here! Is this what you were looking for?”

Gee, thanks, God! Mesmerized, I return to the task at hand.

This puzzle analogy breaks down at some point though, because in God’s plan for us, we don’t get to see the finished picture. We actually don’t have any idea what this puzzle God has for us looks like.

Sometimes the parts of the puzzle we’re working on might seem boring, filling in shades of blue for the sky or brown for the mountains. Still important for a beautiful picture, though, don’t you think?

Other times, it’s exciting when we find a brick to pave a path or a knob to open a door.

But only God knows the whole picture. He is also experienced enough with putting puzzles together to remind us: it’s just no use forcing pieces together that almost, but don’t quite fit.

Ultimately, we have to trust God for all the pieces.

We might think the answers to our problems or the gnawing “why” questions will never be answered.

God may just surprise us by turning a moment in our lives around just enough for us to understand how things work out for good.

But the truth of the matter is that there are difficult parts to our lives we won’t ever understand until we finally get to heaven.

There, when we’re back home, God will finish the picture for us. We will no longer be staring at a puzzle.

We will look into the picture and find that we’ll see something amazingly beautiful.

I think we will see Jesus.

“Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.” Hebrews 12:2

“Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” 1 Corinthians 13:12

What part of your faith puzzle are you working on currently?

How has God handed you a missing piece?

Care to share how God turned a moment around in a way that helped you see how things came together for good?

How is God asking you to trust Him in the bigger picture of faith?

To read more from Bonnie Gray, visit her at Faith Barista and follow her on the twitter at @TheBonnieGray.

In addition to classing up my blog a bit, another outcome of Billy Coffey’s Monday posts here has been the introduction to some really good writers via the comments section. Sarah is one such writer. Before she sent me her post, Sarah asked if I wanted something “real”. Oh yeah, I’m all up in real. I love real! Here’s Sarah:

I hit rock bottom thirteen years ago. On Sunday, September 22, 1996 I woke up in Virginia Beach, in a house I’d never seen before, wearing someone else’s clothes. I sat up and watched the mid-morning sun stream through the window of a strange bedroom. For the first time in months, the alcohol, nicotine, and drug-enhanced fog cleared. It was time to go home.

How did I get here? I was a pastor’s daughter and granddaughter and niece and grandniece. I had always gone to church and believed in God. I knew the difference between right and wrong; and believed in doing the right thing. At eleven years old, I had asked Jesus to be my Savior. But now, as I stood in a strange bathroom, smoothing my hair in the mirror, I didn’t recognize this person that I was looking at—and I didn’t like her either.

Going home was a simple thing. Sorta. It was a simple three-hour drive south. But the emotional and spiritual trip was a lot steeper and more treacherous. Like an epic journey of sorts. First, I had to seek the truth about how I had gotten to rock bottom. Then, I had to allow the people in my life to see the truth about me. Honestly, that was the part that terrified me the most. It was hard enough to look in the mirror, take off my mask, and like myself. To then show that dirty, bloody, sweaty face to the world…

I couldn’t do it. At least, not at first. I came back to my parents’ house and threw away my cigarettes, beer, and pills. I started spending more time at church. Got a good church-going boyfriend. Hung out with good church-going friends. I immersed myself in my pseudo-Christian spiritual pool and ignored the real issues. I wasn’t really healing—I was hiding. I was putting another layer of band-aids on my heart, but not letting the Holy Spirit do surgery. Whenever I slowed down, the Holy Spirit would be there whispering to me that He wanted to do more and be more to me. I was afraid of the process—afraid of the pain. And so, I ran.

One of my favorite stories in the Bible is about a man named Mephibosheth. He was the son of King David’s best friend, Jonathan. When he was a child, he had been dropped by his nurse and was lame in both feet. Because of the strife between King David and King Saul (Mephibosheth’s grandfather), Mephiboheth had lived for years in exile in a desolate country called Lo Debar. But when King David heard that his friend’s crippled son was living in exile, he sent for him and called him to come live in the King’s house and eat at the King’s table like he was a son of the King.

I can identify with Mephibosheth. I was crippled by sin and spent a lot of time in Lo Debar before I finally accepted the invitation to live in the King’s house and eat at the King’s table.

Running three hours north to my non-Christian boyfriend hadn’t healed me when I was eighteen. So, when I was twenty, I ran three hours west to be near my Christian boyfriend. I made this man my idol and determined that his love was going to heal me and give me peace and a purpose. It didn’t work. It couldn’t work. It made the gap between me and God even bigger. And it pulled my boyfriend further away from God, too. We threw away two years on a relationship that was doomed to fail and at the end, I was at rock bottom again. And this time, my life circumstances wouldn’t allow me to go home to my parents’ house to heal. This time, it was just me and God.

I have spent the last ten years walking home from Lo Debar. And my writing—my blog, my guest posts, the magazine articles that I write, and my personal journal—are all parts of the travelogue. I’ve decided that if I’m going to accept the King’s invitation (which I have accepted) to live in His house and sit at His table, I want to take as many people with me as I can.

You can see that I’ve taken my mask off now. It’s something that I have to choose to do on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis. When I started writing, I made a promise to God, to myself, and to my readers that no matter what, I would be real with us all. Every time I write, I have to take off my mask and risk getting hurt. But if it helps other to accept the King’s invitation, it’s worth it.

Won’t you join me for the trip? The King is waiting and the banquet is worth it.

To read more from Sarah, visit her at Living between the Lines and follow her on the twitter, @sarahmsalter

I posted this yesterday. But because it was a holiday I wanted to make sure that everyone who might have missed it had an opportunity to read it today. Few things make me angrier than causing harm to a child and the so called prosperiety gospel. Combine the two? Grrrr….(okay, end of mini rant). Here’s Billy:

The television is largely ignored around our house for most of the day, but like all good rules it is relaxed after dinner. By then a day’s worth of school and play have left my children with as much energy as a bowl of Jell-O. Sitting on the couch and being entertained by Phineas and Ferb is all they can handle.

My daughter is generally Holder Of The Remote when I’m not around, and as my own energy level was Jell-O like yesterday evening, I wasn’t around. I had instead camped out in the rocking chair on the front porch, watching the mountains rather than the TV.

I rocked as the cool September breeze blew through the open living room window, letting in the fresh air and letting escape the sounds of my daughter’s channel changing.

News: “Unemployment continues to rise across the Commonwealth…”

A preacher on the Christian channel: “…faith can heal you of your greatest pains…”

ESPN: “…Red Sox continue their collapse…”

And finally Spongebob: “I’m so cold, I can use my nose drippings as chopsticks.”

Which is where I thought she would stay. My daughter loved Spongebob.

But then it was back to the preacher: “…God loves His children and wants to prosper them…”

I kept rocking, gazing out over the porch to the mountains beyond. A slight smile crossed my face, and why wouldn’t it? My daughter had just passed up Spongebob to learn something about God.

“…He doesn’t want anyone to be sick! Disease is Satan’s doing…!”

Still, it seemed a bit odd. A bit over the top. A bit…

“You’re not healed because you don’t believe!!”

“Dang it!” I said, jumping from the rocking chair and bursting through the door as calmly as possible but not quite. I sat beside her and palmed the remote, changing the channel back to Spongebob with as much nonchalance as I could.

“How ya doin’, sweets?” I asked.

Nothing.

“Wanna watch some Spongebob?”

(nod).

“You okay?”

(nod).

But she wasn’t. I knew that. And I also knew it was too late. The damage had been done.

At bedtime when I went to tuck my daughter in for the night, I could see her tears from the doorway.

“What’s faith?” she asked me.

“Faith,” I said, sitting down beside her, “is believing that God can do whatever He wants.”

“Do you have a lot of faith?”

I’d been father long enough to know that sometimes parents must lie to their children. But I never made it a practice to do so when it comes to matters of faith, so I said, “Sometimes I do. Other times I don’t.”

She looked at me, crying. “The preacher man said I have diabetes because I don’t have faith.”

“That’s not what he said,” I answered.

“He said if I had enough faith, God would take my sugar away.”

I didn’t answer that time. Because again, I couldn’t lie—that’s pretty much what the preacher man had said.

I sat by my daughter’s bed for a long while that night, holding her hand and stroking her hair until the tears left and sleep finally came.

As I gazed down to her I wasn’t thinking about how special she was or how she struggled with her disease. No, I was thinking about how much I would’ve liked that preacher to be there to hear my daughter doubt her faith. I wanted him to see the tears he caused her to shed. And then I would’ve taken him out back and shown him what happens to adults who hurt my little girl.

The whole prosperity gospel movement is still going strong, and there are no signs that it will slow anytime soon. Check the bestseller lists. Turn on your television. They’re everywhere, standing in front of thousands of people in their thousand-dollar suits and pretty smiles, prophesying that God is just chomping at the bit to make you as rich and successful and healthy as they are.

I don’t normally rant, and I never judge. But as I sat there looking down at my daughter, I knew without a doubt that there was a special place in hell reserved for people who manage to contort God’s word to equate faith with wellness and piety with affluence.

I can understand their appeal, I really can. A God who wanted nothing more than to heap material blessings on anyone who paid enough attention to Him makes religion seem a little more palatable. A little more…human. And their theology is mixed with just enough truth to make it seem right.

But if you think it is, if you think that’s how God operates, then I’ll invite you to spend a day with my daughter.

Maybe then you’ll see that God isn’t after our comfort or our health as much as our faith and our trust.

To read more from Billy Coffey, visit him at What I Learned Today and follow him on the twitter at @billycoffey.

I wrote this post last Saturday. I don’t know what came over me. I was sitting there watching my daughter skate, when I had an overwhelming desire to write about it. I wasn’t going to post it here. Mostly because it is such an obvious rip-off of Billy Coffey’s writing style, and it’s not like I even come close to being that kind of writer. So I sent it to Billy for grins. He asked me to post it. Actually, he TOLD me to post it. And you know me. I always do what I’m told. So, here’s my story, subtitled “Billy Coffey couldn’t come up with a title”.

I’m sitting on the top row of bleachers at an arena with a skating rink right smack in the middle. I was smart enough to wear jeans, not smart enough to wear sleeves. I am freezing. I hate being cold and I am very uncomfortable. Still, I find myself smiling.

I am watching my daughter attend her first ice skating party.

After 30 minute of professional instruction on how best not to crack your tailbone, the pack of ten 7 and 8 year old girls are released onto the open ice. They are cautious at first, clinging to the edge of the rink, gradually increasing in speed and confidence. Eventually, my daughter makes her way to the center of the ice – a proud moment for her and for her mama. She is surrounded by her little friends, some cling to her and cause her to fall down, other more experienced skaters help her up and encourage her to keep going. Ten little girls with varying degrees of skill and natural abilities. Yet, there they are, skating together and having fun.

My journey of faith has been much like this little skating party. Still is.

When I first gave my life to Christ, I greatly benefited from the guidance of mature Christians. They lead me to which scriptures I should study first and were great examples of how to live. I was excited to join the party, but still clung cautiously to the safety and comfort of my old self. I suppose I still do that to a certain extent.

I was sort of like those little girls grabbing on for support. The problem with that is, if you grab onto someone who is only slightly more steady than you are, often you cause them to slip and fall as well. It is best to reach out to someone with a more mature, stable faith.

As I became more familiar with His Word and more involved in church, I became more confident. I was no longer clinging to others. I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point I became one of the ones who helped people up. Not because I am even close to what most would consider a model Christian, but because I began to understand the depth of His grace. Having lived a life far apart from God, I hope this level of understanding gives me compassion for those who are struggling to understand it. That’s what I pray for, anyway.

I am venturing out to the middle of the rink, knowing that my friends will be there to help me up when I fall. Knowing that ultimately, God is in control. I’m proceeding with cautious optimism, with faith and hope in Him.

I will probably never be a great skater with impressive spins and jumps. The times in my life when I have allowed myself to believe that? That’s usually about the time I get plowed down by the Zamboni machine…

The Fellowship of the Believers
42They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. 43Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and miraculous signs were done by the apostles. 44All the believers were together and had everything in common. 45Selling their possessions and goods, they gave to anyone as he had need. 46Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved.

(Acts 2:42-47)