I was sitting at a red light The other day I saw something really scary and it was a white city bus turning the corner at an intersection. Through the wide windshield, I could see the driver forcefully steering the horizontal steering wheel using the fulcrum unique to right turns. And above the windshield, illuminated by white lights, was the bus’s destination sign: TRAINING BUS.
Training bus?
I thought I knew to some extent that bus drivers are not born, they are made. However, a standard city bus weighs between 20 and 30 tons. Did the student driver really have to throw that much weight so close to the public?
At that time, being the eccentric writer that I am, my mind immediately jumped to the heavy stuff that we Christians are throwing around, especially God’s Word. They should really train us before bringing us closer to the people, in my case my family.
As I’ve hinted here before, I was raised by wolves. I spent my childhood and adolescence among unemployed hippies, drug users, drug dealers, snarky bikers, Esto graduates, and drag queens. Christ didn’t open my eyes until I was 28 years old.
Shortly after my conversion in 1991, my husband and I were visiting my mother when our conversation turned spiritual. Who was your mother? danger The wise one knew that I would become “part of the Christian Right,” but this development was surprising to her. Still I started testifying to her.
My mother loves gardening, and when I tried to explain my new faith to her, she said, “When I’m working in the garden… when I’m putting my hands in the dirt, I feel closest to God.” “I will,” he said.
ah! I thought. My mother didn’t believe in the God of the Bible, so by God she probably meant some stupid earth mother goddess that she believed was embodied in trees, dirt, and dandelions. .
“That’s pantheism!” I blurted out, sounding the very cymbals that the apostle Paul warned us about. I was researching cults and was throwing out new and important words.
What I wanted to say was “Yes!” It makes perfect sense to me to feel close to God as we work in His creation. ” But instead of building a bridge, I drove my gospel training bus over what I now recognized as an on-ramp, leaving tire tracks of spiritual pride where love might have invaded.
When my mother passed away from cirrhosis in 2005, I went to her house to cure her cirrhosis. I found a green file folder among her papers. I was curious about her, so I opened it and found out that she was actually taking magic lessons via mail order from Wizard Wanda from Wisconsin.
For example, there was a worksheet that instructed the witch students to draw a rectangle on the floor, light this or that candle, or say a spell while facing east. Some lessons included strategic placement of cats.
I just sat there and cried. “Lord, why couldn’t I have shared my faith with her and shown her more compassion?” I asked. “Why couldn’t I love her in your kingdom?”
I closed the file folder and wandered into my mother’s bedroom. There, I found a small altar inside a 1970s-style wicker étagère. An eerie ceramic idol, about 5 inches tall, presided over a shallow metal container, in which her mother had apparently conducted some kind of ritual burning.
The idol’s mouth could not speak, its ears could not hear, and its eyes could not see. Still, in her mother’s eyes, it must have had some power. And perhaps that was real power. The prince of air power disguised as light sucked out the brilliance of true light like a spiritual black hole.
I understand that it is God who chooses His children. No amount of love, reason, or shrewd reasoning can bring into the kingdom those whom God did not choose before the creation of the world. Still, it pains me to think that I could have expressed Jesus better, at least to my mother.
