The Journey Begins

Chapter 1

The Journey Begins:

As a small child my parents taught me to say a prayer that was very common at that time and still in some use today. It is as follows: ”Now I lay me down to sleep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. God bless Mommy and Daddy and --.” It is a very simple child’s prayer but speaks volumes. It was very meaningful to me as a child and also important to me later.

My parents did not attend church nor were they practicing Christians. In fact I only recall being inside a couple of churches prior to my learning to drive. Nevertheless, I still remember saying that prayer kneeling by my bed when I was about five years old. Some will likely say that a child of that age could not remember praying a prayer like that at such a young age – but I do, and more than that I clearly remember believing that God was listening.

I’m now seventy-three years old and I clearly recall that prayer being very meaningful to me. I don’t recall when my parents taught the prayer to me. I don’t have specific recollections of saying it before that night, although I know I did, and I don’t recall specific occasions when I said it after that night or when I stopped saying it.

I’ve remembered that night and that prayer numerous times in the years since, even during the years before I became a Christian, and later during the years when I turned away from the truth in rebellion. I knew, even in those times, that God cared about me – that what I do matters to Him. The problem I wrestled with was lack of understanding. It’s not enough to know that God exists, or even that He cares, though that is very important. I needed to know the Lord as a friend and I needed to know what He wants from me. I needed to know His nature – to understand who and what He is and who and what I am to Him.

As I mentioned I did not grow up in a Christian home. My parents were good, honest, moral and hard-working people. They taught me good moral principles, civic responsibility and a good work ethic but they did not attend church in my youth, though my mother did attend regularly in her later years. My mother and I attended church a couple of times, at my request, when I was very young. One was a very boisterous church service that scared me and the second was a service with no music and as dry as aged crackers. I also attended one service with my uncle as a young teen. It turned out to be “Bingo Night”. I wasn’t impressed by any of them.

I was eighteen before I attended another church service. Bob, a neighbor boy, was interested in a girl whose father would not let her date, except in a group or at least with another couple. Bob wanted me to go on a “blind date” with her friend, a girl neither of us knew, so he could date Elizabeth. I was not about to go on a “blind date” but I did agree to attend a church service to get acquainted. When we arrived at the church, I immediately saw the girl I wanted to date. She just wasn’t the girl Bob and Elizabeth had in mind. It turned out that the girl I was interested in was Elizabeth’s sister, Patsy, who is now my wife. So I promptly became a regular church goer for all the wrong reasons. God, however, had a plan.

I met my Patsy in that church and we were married in that church. I prayed a sincere prayer of repentance in that church when I was just eighteen years old. Over the years my wife, Patsy, and I attended a number of churches from Connecticut to Hawaii. I studied, read numerous books, and prayed seeking truth and understanding and I did my best to live an upright “Christian” life, as I understood it, during most of those years. Nevertheless, I still felt I was missing something, that there was something more. I knew that God loves me. I was sure I would go to Heaven if I died. I just wasn’t fully satisfied that my life was what I needed it to be and more importantly what the Lord wanted it to be.

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