After the Lord got my attention, it wasn’t long before I felt the conviction of the Holy Spirit to attend church, which I did my best to ignore. I’d attended churches off and on for decades. I never fit in there. Churches were places where there were cliques that never included me. My own daily worship and Bible study on the porch was good enough, wasn’t it? I didn’t need a formal church. Now, if you have ever been under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, you’re probably shaking your head at me as you read this. God isn’t generally one to take “no” for an answer. I argued. I resisted. But in the end, after about five months, I gave in. “OK, God. I’ll go to church, but I don’t see how that will be better than just spending time alone with You here on the porch.” I prayed. (Spoiler alert: it was!)
Agreeing to go to church created a whole new dilemma. The small island town where I lived had four churches that I knew of. One Catholic, one Episcopal, one Methodist, and one Baptist. Since I’d grown up thinking of myself as Catholic, despite sporadic attendance and general nonobservance, I decided to go to the local Catholic church. I assumed I’d be most likely to be comfortable there. On Sunday morning, I got up early, put on a dress, picked up my Bible and notebook and headed off to church, leaving my bemused husband at home. Yes, I invited him to come with me, but he tactfully declined. I think he believed this was just a phase I was going through and that I’d be “back to normal” soon.
Services at Catholic churches had always had a familiar feeling. No matter where we lived, the church service was always pretty much the same. This one was too, but I knew immediately that this was not where God intended for me to worship. From the time I entered the sanctuary, it was clear that I was in the wrong place. I went home disappointed, unfulfilled, and wondering if I’d misunderstood God’s instruction to go to church. For the next two or three weeks, I went back to my solitary daily worship and Bible study time on the porch. It didn’t take long for the conviction to return, though. I was once again praying about which church God meant for me to attend. After much meditation and prayer, I settled on visiting the Baptist church. Sunday morning, I once again got up early, put on a church dress, and headed off with my Bible and notebook in hand.
This turned out to be an altogether different experience. As I pulled into the parking lot, a truck pulled in next to me and I was pleasantly surprised to see that it was driven by my longtime friend, Dave Weaver. I had no idea Dave attended this or any church. Dave was about 80 years old and something of a character. He was the classic “good old boy”. He loved to hunt and fish. He drove a pickup truck. He had a ready smile, a mischievous gleam in his eye, and was prone to flirt with any woman around. Every year, he gave away bushels of lemons and grapefruit from the trees in his yard. He was generous and funny. Once, he gave my husband a boat that he decided he didn’t want anymore. He was fond of telling me I was “the best-lookin’ woman on this island!” I’m pretty sure he said that to most of the ladies he knew, but it never failed to make me smile.
Seeing a friend was there, took away most of the nervousness I felt about visiting the Baptist church. I hadn’t expected to know anyone. Before getting out of my car, I whispered a quick prayer of thanks to God for sending a friend to help me feel comfortable. Dave was delighted to see me and greeted me enthusiastically, then showed me where to go. The pastor stood at the entrance greeting people as they arrived. As I shook his hand, he looked me up and down and said, “You haven’t been here before. What brings you to our church today?”
“God told me to come here.” I replied in a matter of fact tone. He looked startled at that but recovered quickly, smiled, and told me he hoped I enjoyed the service. I don’t remember the topic of the sermon that first Sunday, but I distinctly recall the feeling that God intended that message just for me. I took lots of notes. I knew I was in the right place. As I left the building, the pastor asked me what I thought. “I think I heard Him right.” I responded. “I’ll be back next Sunday.”
A group of ladies from the church had gathered around Dave while I was speaking to the pastor. I joined them and Dave introduced me to Ethelene, and a few other women from the church. It was clear he was quite popular with the church ladies. Ethelene started telling Dave about a Sunday School class and invited him to come. He said he’d think about it, but he did it in that way that made it clear he wasn’t planning to attend. “I’d like to come!” I blurted out without thinking. Ethelene smiled and said I’d be welcome. She shared the time and location and I told her I’d be there.
The following week, I arrived for Sunday School, took a seat in the semi-circle of chairs surrounded by about a dozen people and waited eagerly for the class to begin. When the teacher arrived, he sat in the front and said, “Open your Bibles and turn to Genesis, Chapter One, Verse One.” I couldn’t believe I was arriving right at the beginning. It seemed like a sign somehow. I was so excited to start learning I could hardly sit still.
As a child, I was generally a pretty good student. I got lazy as a teenager unless I was interested in the subject being taught. I did OK in school because most learning came easily, but I wasn’t very excited by learning or curious to know things. I went to college after high school but was far more interested in dating and going to concerts and parties than in learning anything. In my mid-20s, though, I developed an insatiable thirst for knowledge. Once a topic grabbed my interest, I’d read everything I could find about it, watch every documentary, or take any class available at the local community college, if I had the money to pay for it. We didn’t have the internet back then, so I prowled around the annual book sales at every library within driving distance of my home looking for inexpensive books on everything from physics to cooking to history. To fill the gaps in my knowledge of classic literature, I looked up the reading lists for college literature classes and read my way through them. Reading A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens sparked a desire to know all about the French Revolution. I spent over a year studying every aspect of it. A magazine article about the woman who claimed to be Anastasia Romanov, the daughter of Czar Nicholas II, kindled an interest in the Russian Dynasty, the various Russian monarchs, the Russian Revolution, the Orthodox Church, Rasputin, and Faberge eggs. Next, I studied the Holy Roman Empire, various other European monarchies, the Celts and other ancestral groups of Britain, Scotland, and Ireland, the Vikings, and China. The more I learned, the more I wanted to know. I took science classes, biology, anatomy, microbiology, physiology, and various kinds of chemistry. That led me to a fascination with the study of human origins, evolutionary theory, geology, psychology, child and human development, sociology, chaos theory, string theory and linguistic anthropology. The study of human origins and how humans spread across the earth became my passion. Every fossil, every discovery and discoverer, and how they all related to the overall explanation of where people came from became familiar. But the more I studied, the more unsatisfactory those explanations seemed to be. Although the documentaries always showed a complete animal when discussing pre-human ancestors, it turned out none of the fossils were complete. Many consisted of just a few fragments. Some were only a partial skull or a few teeth. The whole thing seemed like a tiny amount of evidence wrapped in a whole lot of conjecture. But what did I know? I wasn’t an expert, right? There had to be something I was missing that made it all make sense, I thought. So, I kept studying. I kept reading. I kept searching. I studied evolution and human origins for over 20 years, along with many other sciences. I kept up with each new discovery and each new theory. I visited museums to see the fossils for myself. Still, the evidence seemed unsatisfactory so I expanded my studies into other areas of science. When my studies reached quantum physics, I realized that I wasn’t alone in questioning these stories about evolution. It turned out a huge number of experts in a variety of areas of science had the same doubts I did. It also turned out that the version of evolution most people are taught in elementary, middle, high school and college, the version most people believe, violates the laws of physics, thus it cannot be true.
This was the background I brought into that first study of Genesis. I believed in the idea that the earth was millions of years old and that everything evolved, sort of, but I knew that the commonly held beliefs about it were impossible. I knew that there was no proof, just lots of theories. Like many people, I had a preconceived idea that the biblical version of creation was some sort of fairy tale with God performing magic tricks. Imagine my surprise, then, when that verse-by-verse study of Genesis revealed a rational, logical, even scientific account that made sense. I could barely keep my seat when I realized that Genesis Chapter 1, verses 2 and 3 were an account of God creating mass (matter), energy, and light, the exact components that had to be the first things to exist. How could an ancient writer have known that?! When we got to Genesis 1:6, I actually leapt out of my seat and exclaimed, “The atmosphere!!! Oh, my word! It says He created the atmosphere!” I was so excited I could hardly make myself sit back down to hear more. The other members of the class were very sweet and patient with my outbursts. They seemed to enjoy my excitement. If any of them found it annoying, they did a good job hiding it.
I went home from that first Genesis class bursting with excitement. It was true! I was sure of it. After all those years of trying to find the answer to where it all came from, I’d now found the explanation that fit the evidence and the laws of physics. The Bible was true!!! It wasn’t just a book of myths and stories about how to be a good person. It wasn’t just a bunch of rules and prohibitions. It was a factual, truthful account of history. The people who claimed the Bible was the inerrant Word of God were right. What a glorious discovery that turned out to be! It has been the foundation of all that God has taught me since then. The more I study it, the more I find it to be true and reliable. And, though I love every book of the Bible, Genesis Chapter One will always have a special place in my heart as the scripture God used to teach me His Word is true.
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.
Genesis 1:1-8
Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. God saw that the light was good, and God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light “day,” and
He called the darkness “night.” Evening came and then morning: the first day.
Then God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters, separating water from water.” So, God made the expanse and separated the water under the expanse from the water above the expanse. And it was so. God called the expanse
“sky.” Evening came and then morning: the second day.
a surrendered life 