Back to the Beginning

"For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive."

I Corinthians 15:22

In many ways I had an ideal childhood.  Sometimes, when life gets hard, I long for the simpler days of being a kid again.  I’d like to be restored to that place of child-like innocence and wonder.

I grew up in small, safe, Midwestern towns.  As a boy I rode my bike all around town without fear (except for that dog that scared me once).  I played “Peanut” League and Little League baseball.  For practice my dad threw the ball to me from the middle of the street.  I hit it into a field next to a church.  Our backstop was our burn barrel.  If the ball went past the burn barrel I had to run after it and throw it back to my dad.

Besides baseball, I played with Lincoln Logs and Legos, enjoyed sleepovers with my best friend, Mike, and had a paper route.  Much of my paper route money was spent on sports cards.  Today, I have about 30,000 baseball, football, and basketball cards in boxes, most of which sit in a closet at my parent’s home in Michigan.

Sometimes on summer days we played in the woods down the street from the house, biked around town, bought candy and ice cream at a small convenience store called The Milk Depot,  ran through the sprinklers, or flung our bodies down the Slip-n-Slide in the backyard.

Not everything in my childhood was easy.  There were hard times.  My family had its share of struggles.  However, I don’t recall being burdened down by cares, worries, and disappointments.  In so many ways, my life was good.

And, in many ways, my life is still good.  But I have experienced my share of hardships, circumstances that seemed like setbacks, and disappointments.

These disappointments are an inevitable part of life.  Things do not always work out as we may have hoped they would.  We all make mistakes and bear the consequences.  Sometimes those mistakes cause our hearts to be weighed down by guilt and regret.  But I believe that the disappointments of life do not have to choke out our joy.  We can accept the love and forgiveness of God.  We can still experience the newness of life we felt when we first gave our hearts to Jesus.  We can live in the wonder of God’s amazing grace.

*the preceding was an excerpt from my book, Calling Out to Deep