Our whole lives are made up of choices...we make them every day from the moment we get up even though the more mundane ones might not seem to matter.
Which church to go to is a hard one.
My parents were not religious, Dad was an atheist whilst mum, brought up as a baptist had avoided chapel for the rest of her life, which was a choice....of sorts.
The whole idea of religion was tricky in my family...I too had gone with my welsh grandparents to chapel as a young girl and when I returned back to my parents they sent me to the Unitarian chapel close to where we lived...I suspect because it gave them some time on their own rather than a desire to give me any spiritual guidance.
I cant remember now whether I believed in what they told me at the chapel... but God was always there, a part of my life in the same way as my grandparents...for me it was not a choice...He was just there....but as I got older the knotty problem of which church to go became pressing.
We had moved from the middle of Rochdale to the outskirts and I actually as a teenage girl decided that lacking a Unitarian chapel I would do some consumer research.
I went to services at the local Methodists, the Church of England and even the Roman Catholic’s new church up Kirkholt....they lost me fairly quickly as in those days the services were all in Latin!
My friends were all going into Manchester to hear Billy Graham and they were coming home close to hysteria...I then made a decision not to go with them...I did not have to go to church to know I was saved...there was never any question of it in my mind, so I stayed home and found the Church of England was my resting place..
All my choices since then have been easy in the field of spirituality..I became a hippie, learned meditation, stayed away from the church for a while and gave my children the same freedom of choice that I had enjoyed....
In the matter of choice we are given free will......God always choses us...and amazingly we are given the option of whether or not we chose Him...He’s still God even if we don’t!
2 comments:
Jean, thanks for sharing. I love the picture of a mixed economy in terms where you attended, but with the certainty that goes with it.
God might have been a choice for some, but for you the no choice option seems to have become embedded early, which I would have loved to have been present in my own life.
Lovely post. I too have followed Jesus by the scenic route,through various denominations,and some years away.But I was the one who wandered away, God was always there waiting.
Am a minister's wife in the Church of Scotland now, but deep down it's my Baptist roots that have kept me going,and I am grateful to those who gave me the foundations to build on.
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