IN THE BEGINNING . . . in my beginning the world was flat and Dalmeny sat at the center of the world.  Everyone in the world was a Christian except a few who were not and they smoked.  Of course, then there was the city of Saskatoon about fifteen miles away, which expanded my view of the world, but at first I wasn’t aware of that.  I still remember my conversation with Mommy, and while I insisted the world was flat, she told me otherwise and I tried to grasp a concept contrary to what seemed so real.

Smoking was really bad and so was wearing earrings and lipstick.  One time I tried putting bobby pins on my earlobes to see what I would look like with earrings.  Not bad, actually.  Once my little friend and I tried dancing on the wide cement entrance to Daddy’s general store until some elderly woman came by and forbade us to do such a thing!  My mother was different from all the other women in this small Mennonite town because she was from the United States and she wore lipstick.

That was about sixty years ago and I certainly live on a different planet now than I did then.  Our stories all begin somewhere, and that “somewhere” sets a world view with a profound affect upon the rest of our lives. To look back and identify our world view can help us recognize inherent flaws and bring to light what needs to change as it lines up, or not, with the truth we discover as we grow up.  I had to grow up to realize that things are not always what they seem.  The world IS round and it is vastly larger than our small Mennonite village.  Real Christians are identified by the way they love God and each other, not by outward performance or dress or rules kept.  Yet, I did not learn all that overnight, especially not the identity of a Christian, which I’m still learning. 

So many voices tell us so many things.  In college I entertained human philosophy and the heady experience of feeling wise and knowledgeable came crashing down as did my earlier view of the world being flat—both deceiving and absolutely erroneous.  “For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God’s sight” 1 Cor. 3:19.  I still remember the raging battle in my heart as I walked between the library and chapel (both literally and metaphorically) about whether to follow my college friends into their intellectual sophistication or to trust that God had not led me down a garden path of error.  Once I made the choice to trust Him and not doubt, the battle ceased and peace flooded my. . . lonely soul.

Soon, however, I met the love of my life and discovered our similar spiritual passions.  However, there was so much more to come, to learn, more lies to shed, more choices, more pain.  The journey to find our way back to the hearts Jesus gave us from the world of performance and head knowledge is a very long and painful one.
Stay tuned.