I.

Joshua’s parents took him to church when he was a boy—well, his mom did, every so often.  Once or twice his dad came along, too.  So Joshua knew about Jesus.  Jesus did stuff and said things, and some people killed him, but he wasn’t dead.  Joshua also knew church was boring.  He was glad when his mom finally stopped going.

In high school, Joshua wanted a girl.  She liked to talk about her church.  She invited Joshua, but he didn’t want her that badly.

In college, Joshua’s roommate turned out to be a Christian.  His roommate tried to start a few conversations with Joshua about Jesus or the Bible, but he always told his roommate to forget it.  Joshua just didn’t get religion, didn’t need it.  It seemed stupid to him, though he guessed it was okay for people who needed it.  He didn’t need a book to tell him how to be a good person or what was right and wrong.  He already knew all that.  The one time his mother tried in those years to talk about church with Joshua, he told her church was for weak people.  Then she didn’t talk about it.

After he graduated, Joshua got a good-paying job with an engineering company.  He worked hard and played hard.  He didn’t really care too much where he lived, or what he wore or ate, but he did care about what he drove.  He loved BMWs and had for years, learning as much as he could about the cars.  As soon as he could, be bought a 440i—yeah, it was used, but it was in good shape.  He did his own work on it, modified it to perform so much better than stock.  He accessorized his BMW.  He felt good in his BMW, free, alive.

When he wrecked it, they had to cut him out and a helicopter took him to the hospital.  He lay there in his hospital room, lights out and blinds closed, feeling ticked off by the itch where the lower half of his right leg used to be.  There was a knock on the door.  A bald man with glasses poked his head in the room, said he was a chaplain and had come to see Joshua.  Joshua replied quickly, firmly, No! No chaplains!  The man quietly left.  Joshua could not understand why those people wouldn’t just leave him alone.

II.

Emily loved church!  Yeah, she was weird like that.  She loved all the singing, with the lights and smoke and guitars.  She loved youth group, the lock-ins, the games and talking with her friends.  She loved Jesus.  Everyone she knew loved Jesus.  When her parents divorced, her dad went to another church.  When she was with him, she would go.  She didn’t like his church as much.

At her church, the pastor was so lit, and he loved to talk about love and loving people.  She loved to hear about love.  She loved to love people.  At the church her father started attending, the preacher said God wasn’t happy with people, but Emily thought if God loves us, how could he not be happy with us?  That pastor said people weren’t good, but Emily just knew in her heart that she was.  He talked a lot about the cross, but the cross made Emily feel confused and a little scared, so she didn’t think about it very much.  The songs at her father’s church sounded old, slow, and sad; she didn’t like singing them; she wanted to sing about love and being happy.

When she went off to college, Emily was glad she didn’t have to go to church with her dad anymore.  But she wasn’t really happy at college.  During her first semester, one of her professors, a man who was so smart and that she was sort of attracted to, said Christianity was mind control, and that churches were harmful for society.  That bothered her for the rest of the week.  She wanted to be happy, to love and be loved, but the longer she was at college, the more unhappy she became.  When she talked about her church with the friends she made at college, they asked her a lot of questions she had never thought about, that no one had ever asked her before.  No one at her church talked about those things.  She felt lost.  They made fun of her.

When she went home for Christmas, she cried in her room and didn’t feel like going to the Christmas Eve service—she always used to love Christmas, all the lights and happy songs.  She took the Bible from her bookcase and put it in a drawer she rarely used.  That felt bad, but it also felt sort of good.

After she graduated, Emily told her mother that Christianity was a delusion and that Christians were the biggest obstacle to social progress since slavery.  Her mother cried.  Emily felt guilty and then felt angry for feeling guilty.  Then she was just angry.

III.

All Sarah’s friends knew she didn’t like to worry.  She was always telling her husband that when they would argue about it.  She knew she had a comfortable life, really: nice job and home, nice friends and family.  Truly, she was grateful.  She worried about her relationship; maybe she could have done better.  She worried about getting pregnant.  Coronavirus worried her to death!  She worried about people not being smart and responsible, like her.  Sarah would worry about things she said and things she didn’t say.  She worried about money—it looked like there would never be enough for what she wanted to do.  She worried about all her unfulfillment.  She was basically a happy person.  She worried about her looks.           She made plans and schedules, trying to think of everything.  She would sit in her cubicle in front of her computer, worrying.  There was just so much to worry about!  She wanted to do something meaningful, while she was still able to.  She would sit at home in the evening, with the Oreos and the television, thinking about everything that might happen and feeling terrible about it all.  In her car, going here and going there, she would worry about how she was wasting her life.

She would sit in church and worry.  She would try to listen, she wanted to listen, she didn’t want to worry, God knew!  But sitting there she would get to thinking: her thoughts would just carry her off, down those worn roads, ruts.  It was hard to focus in church, and it all seemed so long.  She felt helpless, powerless.  It made her feel foolish, and she worried about that.

She went on a mission trip to Guatemala.  She knew that she should help make the world a better place.  It was so hot and dirty, and all the mosquitoes!  She just couldn’t eat anything, and it was so hard to sleep, and she had never sweated so much!  On the flight back, her friend Tiffany talked about the change the trip had made.  Tiffany mentioned some of the people they had worked with, there, but Sarah didn’t remember them.  Tiffany asked what Sarah would remember most about the trip, but she couldn’t name just one thing.

Another friend invited her to a Bible study.  Sarah went.  She talked, about her worries.  She didn’t like to, but they just would come out of her mouth when she talked.  And her friends there didn’t seem to mind, though Sarah worried about that.

Every night, Sarah would pray, asking God to take care of her worries.  It didn’t seem like it did any good.  She would drift off to sleep worrying that God didn’t hear her prayers, or didn’t want to.  She began to wonder why she even bothered: why add to her worries?  That Sunday, she woke up just exhausted, and felt like staying at home, so she did, and the Sunday after that, too.

IV.

Micah didn’t grow up going to church, but his parents would pray at the dinner table.  They read a story Bible to him when he was young—he still had the book, and he was looking forward to when he could sit with his children and read it with them, too.

It was while he was in high school that he began to notice that people around him didn’t seem to like Christians.  He went through college listening to professors and students who seemed to go out of their way to make fun of Christianity, though he never heard them mock any other religion.  He wondered what they really knew about Christianity, then he also wondered what he really knew, so he started to look into it.  His second year in college, he had the realization that the ridicule was a way they used to signal each other about their intelligence and politics: in-group, out-group stuff, middle school stuff.  Micah never did have much use for people who acted like they were smarter or better than others.

Although he never attended a church during college, Micah read in the Bible once in a while.  He didn’t like everything he read; some of it bored him—he didn’t understand the point of some things he read in the Bible, but he kept reading, from time to time, and he read some things, there, that kind of grabbed him and surprised him.

One day at work, a few of them got to talking.  He shared something the Bible said.  He didn’t feel embarrassed about it, though, even when his supervisor let him know later that the workplace was not the appropriate setting to share religious views.  Micah was a little surprised by that: this wasn’t college, after all.  He hadn’t said anything offensive, that he could see.  Maybe he had mis-stated what the Bible said, so that evening at home he double-checked.  No.  He had said it just the way the Bible said it.  It seemed clear; it seemed wise and true.  It seemed to put things in perspective.  He kept reading that night, wondering if he maybe hadn’t really understood what it meant, had misapplied it, but as he finished that book of the Bible, he still felt like he had understood.  The Bible wasn’t bad.  It could be difficult and confusing, but Micah felt like he was understanding some more things in it.

Not long after that, Micah decided he should find a church.  He tried one, but for the month and a half he went there, he never did feel as if he better understood anything about what the Bible was saying.  The sermons he heard there didn’t seem to say much of anything about anything, although the people there seemed to enjoy it and leave happy.  After that, he tried another church for a few weeks, but all the pastor seemed to talk about was politics, and Micah wasn’t all that interested in politics.  He wanted something different from his college experience.

He tried one church and another, for about half a year, until he seriously wondered whether any church offered what he was seeking.  In one, Jesus basically seemed to be a Socialist.  In another, their Jesus was dressed in the American flag and sang Lee Greenwood with streaming tears.  In still another, the preacher talked about believing in your goals and how to be successful in life while the people around Micah scribbled notes to themselves.

A Sunday came when Micah wasn’t sure what church to try, and to tell the truth, he was sort of tired of it, but then he got a text that morning from a co-worker, inviting him to her church.  Thinking it over for a few minutes, he replied okay.  He’d be the first to tell you that was the best decision he never made.  Micah is always ready to talk about that church, about his wife, who had invited him there, already five years ago.  He is always ready to talk about grace and the Holy Spirit, who enabled Micah’s mouth to say yes, though Micah felt like saying no that morning.

Micah will also be the first to tell you he is not an especially good disciple.  He then says he has faith that God is helping him to become a better one.  His wife’s eyes light up as she tells you about Micah’s discipleship at church and outside church.  Micah just shakes his head and smiles as he looks at his little girl and baby boy.