And again I say, "WOW!"

I'd just about given up on the Christian spiritual condition--or maybe I'd just about given up on my own would be more accurate. Then I made it to today.

I'll backtrack a moment.

About 6-7 months ago, roughly, I posted a blog to express heart-break over one of my students. She was 17, smart, athletic...and pregnant. I was concerned for her future. You just don't get pregnant in high school without negative consequences.

I was also concerned for her parents. Her mother, I felt, could take things in stride in spite of the hurt; her dad, though...Tony sees everything in black and white. I didn't know how he would react.

So I started communicating--or rather, God started communicating through me. I certainly can't take credit for the words that apparently came through at the right times--those times when Valerie would e-mail me back to tell me that she'd forwarded what I'd said to Tony or that she was crying for joy. Considering I'm a bit like Moses, I couldn't think it was me, but I couldn't figure out the why me part. Why would God use me that way in something like this?

To make a long story short, Valerie and I have kept in touch to the point that we decided to baby shop Thursday--for both of us. And during the course of the evening, I expressed my concern that I just wasn't getting it. My spiritual life was waning. I was criticizing everything. I wasn't trying to be critical of those in the church; I was being critical of the organization of the church, though. Something just didn't fit in my heart. Was it my pride, I asked her? I answered. Probably. But what I couldn't deal with something much more, whatever it was. I didn't tell her this, but I was about ready to ditch church altogether and work with those whom I see on a daily basis--those who were either as frustrated as I was or those who I felt were at least understanding and not judgmental, as I had found more often than not during my churning.

Of course, being a Christian, she invited me to her church. Of course, wanting to be polite, I accepted.

So the boys and I traipsed into Plum Creek this morning and went through the motions again of worship, even though it was modern and it was heart-felt by others and it was informal and it was...It was a typical church worship service.

And then, of course, I was expected to go to Sunday School. Of course, being polite, I went. When we arrived, Valerie told me that they had been studying the book of Genesis since January and they were on chapter 3.

Oh, goody.

I've been on these marathon, forty-years-in-the-wilderness-of-the-Old Testament Sunday schools before. LAW and MORE LAW. BEATEN and SCOURGED with the Ten Commandments and repeating the laws of the Jews and how we can eat meat now but we can't do much else and...

But I decided to play along and let Valerie do the reading of Exodus that we were supposed to do at our table while I caught up with an old friend whom I haven't seen since I left CCHS.

Then this mountain of a man got up and started teaching about Genesis 3:21-24 and in 5 minutes I realized I was going to run out of space in the margins of my Bible--and I meant the margins in all 1840+ pages. What he was saying was ASTOUNDING!

Where most folks have pointed to the fact that we had shame and we needed to be clothed at the moment we sinned and now we still have shame so...LAW...Bob talked about Man's faith/repentance and God's atonement/security. He talked about the fact that God's plan wasn't derailed at the sin but that sin was PART OF THE PLAN! I understood before that God wasn't surprised by our sin--that he knew it was happening. I'd just never thought of it as outright being part of the plan, though. I always saw the Trinity in Heaven huddling, saying, "OK. We KNOW what's coming but we can ALWAYS HOPE that they won't fall to temptation..." Somehow, I'm more confused by the fact that that wasn't the case, but it does give a whole new outlook on the teachings that we "failed" God, doesn't it? Maybe we don't "fail" him at all in the way folks think we do. (And I'm not trying to be heretical or blasphemous. I've thought for a long time that our failings came from what we don't do rather than what we do.) He talked about the sufficient cover of clothing that only GOD could give and they didn't ask for that. (Wear leaves some time. Oh. EEEEWWWWWW. Then again...) He talked about the fact that Adam didn't doubt God after the sin because he named Eve Eve for the fact that he believed she would become the mother of all living after God had pronounced his death sentence. He talked about Isaac and Abraham and the 3 days' trip to a mountain in the same region as Golgotha (imagination, run) and then the fact that Isaac is resurrected as far as Abraham is concerned and the next time we see Isaac he's looking for his bride and how Noah lined the ark with pitch and "pitch" in Hebrew is the same word for "atonement" which essentially means "keeps the flood of judgment out" and...

All-in-all, he took an OT Scripture, took out the condemnation that I am so used to hearing and instead pulled out the evidence of grace.

It's so easy to see when it's pointed out! There is so much hope in such a dark, dark point in history! Why has all of that NEVER been pointed out in my hearing in the 41 years I have been in church?

Suddenly all the doubts that I've had--the doubts of the truth of the Scriptures, the doubts about the purposes/teachings of the church, etc.--may be taking a turn. The "unity" of the Scriptures that everyone talks about but no one truly teaches (to my knowlege--until today) is becoming clearer.

I've never gone to a church because of its Sunday school before. I guess that may change, too.

Now I just have to get a LARGE notebook.