Tantalizing if True

I heard my baby’s heartbeat last week, for the first time. Exciting. Eerie. Humbling.

I have mentioned that I am married now. Details of my wedding are available online for your viewing.

You are my jackpot.
You are my wildflower.
You are my yokefellow.
You are my candle.
You are my match.

Tuesday night I asked my best friend to marry me, and she said yes. She’s from southeast Illinois and works in international student ministry. My grandmother loves her too.

Just thought I should mention this. You don’t need to be as excited about it as I am.

Maybe you want to know something about the creator of this website. I’m middle-aged, single, a writer and search engine marketer, caregiver for my 93-year-old grandmother. I’m fifth-generation Methodist, descendant of circuit riding preachers in West Virginia, though my family left the Methodist church when I was 17. Since then, I’ve been part of churches with labels such as: Southern Baptist, Nazarene, charismatic, apostolic, Anabaptist, Assembly of God, Church of Christ, and (shudder!) Presbyterian. Hypocrite is another label that has been applied to me. Some aspects of my life I would rather not talk about. But I’d rather be inconsistent with my beliefs than to stop believing them.

In the 19th century, newspapers would sometimes flag articles “Important If True” when their information was potentially urgent but they didn’t have time to verify it before press-time. One wag wrote that churches should put the same sign over their doors.

Even when we don’t fully understand the truth about God and the world he created, even when we’re frustrated when we try to talk about these subjects (”No, that’s not it… what I meant to say was…”), we ought to know that truth really does exist. We might even find that it’s specific, practical, and relevant. And it’s not just important, it’s tantalizing, because it’s so different from the way we’ve been living all our lives. Is the Good News too good to be true? Not hardly.

Unlike most bloggers, I find myself constantly editing and re-editing my earlier posts, sharpening the point I want to make. We need to wake up. We’ve been dreaming.

Elva is what my grandmother’s Texan-German relatives call her - short for Evangeline. She is more than 90 years old, and remembers bouncing on her Civil War veteran grandfather’s knee before 1914, while he called her “My little elf” (in German). She’s fifth-generation Texan, but was raised in a farming community where everybody spoke German, so she didn’t learn English until she started to school. She raised eight children while working in nursing and food service, first in Houston and later in St. Louis.
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“…The term “home-comer” has, of course, a religious connotation. For it takes a good deal of courage to say “no” to the fashions and fascinations of the age and to question the presuppositions of a civilisation which appears destined to conquer the whole world; the requisite strength can be derived only from deep convictions. If it were derived from nothing more than fear of the future, it would be likely to disappear at the decisive moment. The genuine “home-comer” does not have the best tunes, but he has the most exalted text, nothing less than the Gospels. For him, there could not be a more concise statement of his situation, of our situation, than the parable of the prodigal son.”

– E.F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful, Harper and Row, 1973

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