Growing up in Northern Virginia my family attended Grace Presbyterian Church in downtown Springfield. I don’t remember a great deal, but what I most remember are the things that I didn’t understand about the church. Oh, and how quickly my father would literally nod off to sleep as soon as the sermon started. Its funny how my most vivid memories are not the things I learned, but the things that were said or happened that I didn’t understand. Some simple things, like why did I have to put on a suit and clunky uncomfortable shoes? If I was going to be bored for an hour, it seemed to me, at the time, that I should be comfortable. Or why did the church have a steeple? There was no other building that I was aware of that had a giant point on it. Why did we have to sing Hymns? What is a Hymn? And if they were so good, why didn’t you hear any on the radio? They were impossible to sing and I didn’t understand most of the words. No one spoke like that. And honestly, what or who is an Ebenezer?

There were so many things that happened that made no sense to me. Why was the pastor throwing water on the head of the babies and making them cry? I always got in trouble when I threw things on people and made them cry. Why did the pastor always say, “As far as the East is from the West, your sins are forgiven” or “The Lord loves a cheerful giver”? For that matter, what is a sin? I was certain that all these things had something to do with God and they were important. But I was not sure what they had to do with me.

Even as I got older and started going to church on my own there was so many things that confused me. The Bible my mother gave me which was written in Old English was very hard to figure out a lot of what it was saying. Why are there so many versions of the Bible and what does it matter? Is one version better than the others? Does one version give me more understand of God than the others do? If the Bible is what we should live by, then why doesn’t it have practical advice for life at school and work?

These and so many things, made it more difficult for me to grow in my faith and knowledge of God. It seemed to me, if I could understand more about what it means to be a Christian, what the Bible is teaching me, and what the Church is doing then I could have grown faster and deeper in my relationship with God.