Follow the Recipe

[This was a posting from 7-20-05 in my old blog that I am moving to the new blog.]



My friend Woody, recently told me, in a kind way, that he was going to help free me from the tyranny of the Bible. I am grateful for his words because they have stimulated me finally, finally to put form to the inchoate defense I have about my faith in God, the Bible, salvation, and Jesus.
I must also give my nephew Eric Meyer credit for his words to me about 10 years ago when he said that after studying world religions in college, his professor said that the best religion for a person is probably the one he was raised in, and hence, most comfortable with. I have pondered this thought also for hours and hours and hours.
Here goes.
Although I credit Eric and Woody with the stimulation for creating these words around my deeply held convictions of faith in God, I really need to go back further.
To a death bed.
The death bed of my beloved father, Orrin W. Meyer.
Dad was a pillar of the church. President for a number of years, the years the money was raised that raised the new building for St. Martin's Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chilton, Wisconsin. He was an agriculturist, hands in God's soil, dependent on God's rain and sunshine.
And he was wise.
Cancer invaded him, and God rescued him to heaven when he was 59, leaving my mother bereft, and me holding on furiously to all the memories and words he gave me.
But these words, these, were the most potent, and most surprising.
It was about 1 or 2 weeks before Dad died, and I was laying on the bed with him in the room that was his & Mom's bedroom the last 25 years of his life (He had said to me laying there and looking up, I love that light fixture. It has been the friendly good morning to me for so many years.) Because Dad always had the answers for things, I decided to ask him the most important question.
Dad, what's gonna happen to you when you die?
Pause.
I don't know.
Pause. I gulp.
But Dad resumes and gives me the answer that stills my heart, but in a way I hadn't expected.
Mary Lou, who can be so full of pride as to think they can understand the mind of God? Who? We are nothing compared to God. We can't know what it will be like, but we have been promised it is good. I believe it will be better than anything I can imagine because I am just a man, and God is God. I would like you to remember that man in the pulpit is only a man too. He has no closer connection to God than you do. You have to listen to the small, still voice inside as the minister speaks. He may say some things that don't fit with your inner voice. Sift them out, but keep the pearls. There will always be pearls. And always go to church. It's good PR in the community.
There ended my community minded father's dissertation on faith. Simple, real, honest, with death bed clarity.
And County Agricultural wisdom :)
My Dad didn't spend time in the Word like some would think he should have, but he had faith, trust, and lived his life in joyful Christian victory.
And he ended it that way, a young man dying without bitterness or fear. A man faithful enough to sing with my mother, I am Jesus's little lamb.........
That was quite a witness for me.
And the Lutheran Church, Missouri Synod had helped him with that. The church, and his small, still inner voice, that I choose to call the Holy Ghost.
Oh the miracles I have seen in my life! So much proof that there is rhyme and reason in this world, even in this fallen world. I know God lives. And I know God lives in me. I hear the Holy Ghost speak to me often. I hear that small, still voice within, and in the miracle of my sobriety, I listen to it.
Listening has brought me understanding of the next right thing to do. And living life one day at a time, trying to do the next right thing, keeping that as my goal, has brought the by-product of happiness. And all my happiness is directly the result of trying to live the right kind of life, a life with ear open to God in me.
I also hear my father's voice: Who can be so proud as to think they can understand the Mind of God?Not me.
So I use the Word to help, understanding that even that cannot come near the truth and reality that is GOD. I believe that God chose for me the Christian path to spend a life returning to Him. He gave me the Word, and He made the Word flesh in Jesus to bring it home to me. This is the path God chose for me.
My precious husband Harry would call it "following the recipe."
But I also believe that God might have chosen other ways, other recipes, for other people. I believe it when the Bible says that God is Love. I do not believe a loving God would leave any part of His creation without guidance and direction and salvation.
Nope.
Just don't believe it.
But He chose our paths. And expects us to commit to those paths, in love. His Love. To be faithful to those paths as He created them, whether Eastern or Western in flavor.
I love the Word because it creates a safe structure for me wherein to find the next right thing to do, the way to behave, the way to be loving and kind, the way back to God.
My life is that: A journey home to God.
I have come to understand that I am not a human being. I am a spirit, a part of God's creation, trying to be human for a very short time, and it is hard.
But I have the Word to help me. And because I am trying to be wise like my parents, I am using that Word as my beacon, my light on the way home.
Yes, just as nothing can separate me from God's love, nothing can stop me from living in the Word!
I have found my freedom.
My freedom is in living the path God gave me.
Becoming the woman God meant me to be.
And what joy that is!