Oh The Old Rugged Cross

I attended Catholic School from 2nd grade through 8th grade, and every morning would go directly from the school bus into church for morning mass, then from mass to my classroom. Everyday, whether I noticed it or not, there was a cross sitting on top of the church, a crucifix at the front of the church, a crucifix on a post carried by an altarboy if there was a procession (and sometimes I was that altarboy), and a crucifix at the front of every class room. At home we had a crucifix hanging in our hallway, and for a time my mother would gather her kids in front of the crucifix to say the rosary.

We had religious education everyday, or if not everyday then at least once a week. And when I went to the public high school I still had weekly CCD classes and Sunday Mass. It was while in high school that I started to question if God really existed. By the time I was in college, and I went to a Catholic college, I was convinced that God was a myth necessary because of mankind’s ultimate destination, death.

It wasn’t until after college and in my first year of marriage that we had a heated family argument at the Johnson dinner table about abortion which somehow merged into religion (I was never going to argue religion). That night I told Jackie to lay her hands on me and pray that God would reveal Himself to me. I figured if there was a God who was intelligent and thus had a way that He wanted me to be then it would be stupid not to know what that was. Intellectually I couldn’t wrap my mind around God although I had spent sleepless nights trying to. When Jackie prayed nothing seemed to happen. But over the next 6 weeks I began to get a lot of answers to questions I had, and saw the power of God move in really interesting ways. In fact, I began to believe that prayer would activate the power of God even if I personally still didn’t believe in God. And as I shared in the last post, one afternoon He led me to confess my sins and lay down my life before Him, and to step out in faith (without first seeing or feeling), and He became Light and Truth in my life.

For me it was the scripture from Luke 11 that reached out and grabbed me: "Ask and you shall receive; seek and you shall find; knock and it shall be opened to you. For whoever asks, receives; whoever seeks, finds; whoever knocks, is admitted. What father among you will give his son a snake if he asks for a fish, or hand him a scorpion if he asks for an egg? If you, with all your sins, know how to give your children good things, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him."

Some years later I had a chance to go back into one of my grade school classrooms and talk to some 5th graders, and I noticed the crucifix on the wall. I realized that although I had always known that Jesus died for the sins of men and then rose from the dead, the connection never was made in my brain; why was that necessary? And even, during those 6 weeks prior to my conversion when I read and understood the why, there still was another step. The knowledge needed to go from my brain to my heart. Praise God, He did it for my sin, He did it for me.