“Who is like you among the gods, O Lord – glorious in holiness, awesome in splendor, performing great wonders? “ (Exodus 15:11 NLT).
But I didn’t just hear about God in church every Sunday. Another place that lives securely in my childhood memories is the dark old church basement, which always had a bad smell. There was the dank, musty smell of rubber cement, library paste, and outdated rest rooms. Behind a closed door at the far ed of the basement lived a huge, a foul-tempered, ancient coal furnace.
In that smelly basement, amazing stories were told, lessons were taught, and young lives were shaped. I learned a long time ago that a man named Jesus taught people how to live. I heard stories of how He healed people who suffered from every kind of sickness by simply touching them or speaking a word or two. I heard how Jesus had created food for thousands of hungry people out of a young boy’s lunch and how He had calmed violent storms. He had even walked on water! Jesus seemed ancient, mysterious, invisible, and distant. But He was a hero I tried hard to believe in.
Then one day, there came the discovery that Jesus was much more than just a hero from the past. The revelation came that this same Jesus, quite literally, was really alive right now. And somehow, among a bazillion other kids in the world, He knew and loved a ten-year-old boy with fifty-two warts on his knee and who hated going to his church.
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I also hated memorizing Bible verses, but I wanted to go to summer camp. However, the price I had to pay was memorizing three hundred of them. Worse yet, I had to memorize the verses down in the church basement. At the far end of the basement, the furnace growled and belched as if in righteous indignation, representing the kind of wrathful God I had grown up fearing. Someday that furnace is going to destroy this place, I’d hope half-heartedly as I thumbed through my Bible, searching for the next verse on the list to memorize. Memorization did not come easily for me. My mind was better at creating fantasy worlds, where the stories of a much more personable Jesus played out like a movie in my imagination.
Then I found it, and it was a short verse, Hebrews 13:8. Things were looking up! Not only was it short, but it was an easy verse to remember. “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”
It didn’t take long before the simple words took root in my mind, and I hurried to the teacher to recite them before the words had a n opportunity to slip away forever. At home that night, I lay in bed, staring at a glow-in-the-dark cross I had stuck on the wall with a thumbtack. It was my reward for verses recited that evening. The glow of the cross held my attention as sleep once again evaded me, my active imagination playing out the gruesome removal of the fifty-two warts soon to be burned away.
“God, why are you letting this happen to me?” I whispered toward the cross hanging over the foot of my bed. “Why couldn’t I be alive two thousand years ago, when you could just snap your finger and heal anybody of anything? Why don’t you…” I paused mid-sentence in an attempt to hear what seemed to be a voice whispering out of the darkness in response.
I paused, not daring to breathe. Then I heard it again. This time, I recognized the voice. It sounded like my own! It was reciting the Bible verse I had memorized just a short time before.
To Be Continued Tomorrow…