| Childhood Imagination (Ruth Marlene Friesen) |  |
In my own case, having a personal, long-running conversation with God, was a huge factor.
From the time I was a week old I'd been carried into the village church, so I knew about God before I knew that I knew him. I had no difficulty having running conversations with God in my nimble mind. I tried to see the world through his eyes, and since he loved people and I did too, I felt that made us friends.
When I was about nine, my mom's cousin, a gifted speaker, had a series of meetings in a great-uncle's metal quonset. With the farm machinery moved out, it made a large hall.
Our people were used to church in High German. "Uncle John" (as I was taught to call him), was a novelty for he dared preach in Low German, which was considered to be the language of the kitchen and the barn. Crowds came. Ever a people-watcher, I was fascinated.
Uncle John had a nightly Children's Feature, when all the kids could gather around the edge of the raised platform to watch an object lesson. It was always an interesting story with a meaning. I loved it.
Later in the service, speaking to the adults, my cousin-uncle explained that it wasn't enough to know about God, one must trust that he sent Jesus to die in our place, personally, because none of us could measure up to God's standards.
Then he invited people to come stand around the platform to show they were deliberately applying or reckoning Jesus' blood as shed for each one, personally. He described Hell too, which was the default option, if we didn't trust Christ for ourselves.
I followed all that. It shook me up a bit, for going up with the adult crowd instead of the kids was scary for me.
By the next day I'd resolved that it was important enough to do that - go to the front as a public stand of what I believed - so I psyched myself up to go that night when Uncle John would make the invitation again. He'd said he would. |