Hayleigh: She Walks!

She Walks! 

Step by step, Hayleigh is getting there.  Her room, once full of machines, is starting to get a bit barren.  ECMO gone.  Ventilator gone.  IV drips gone. She has moved from 20L oxygen (strength of flow through nasal canula) a week ago to 0.50L today.  She eats solid foods, has started physical therapy, and constantly talks about ‘getting out of here.’  “Daddy, what do I need to do next to get out of here?”  Love the determination of this girl. 

She is even starting to do homework.  Her class is reading ‘Our Town’ in school and so she has started to read this classic, Pulitzer Prize winning Thornton Wilder play.    A Yale professor writes the foreword in the edition we are reading, and something very interesting jumped out at me this morning.... 

He writes about reading ‘Our Town’ as a teenager and being bored.  Its ‘old fashion values’ no longer resonate with a modern public that knows far more than Wilder knew.  The professor confesses he had seen the play a few times, thought he knew it, and didn’t think much of ‘Our Town.’  

Then he went to an ‘Our Town’ production at the Lincoln Center which remains his most memorable theater going experience of his life.  He writes “I was so mesmerized by it subversive power, so warmed by its wisdom, so shattered by its third act, that I couldn’t believe ‘Our Town’ was the same play I thought I had known since childhood!”

He rushed home to re-read ‘Our Town’ only to find that what he had seen on stage was very little changed from what he had read and seen all those years before.   And then it dawned on him…what had changed was HIM.  He had enough life experience by that point in life that he finally understood what was so great about ‘Our Town’

Why did this strike me so significantly this morning?  Because if you replace ‘Our Town’ above and insert ‘The Bible’ you will have my story.  Maybe its your story too.

The Bible was boring to me as a teenager and young man.  It seemed so old fashioned and out of place in our modern world, so trite compared to the wisdom of the world.  I knew the stories.  I had been to church hundreds of times.   But the Bible never really interested me. 

And then the thunderbolt happened to me on a bumpy ride after serving with our church in the slums of Kenya.  While the experience in the slums opened my eyes, the thunderbolt that shifted my faith came from a scientist.  

Because evolution was taught as fact, not theory in all my schools….and because the logical extension of evolution is that ‘there is no God’ I asked this scientist “How are you a Christian if science is so clear that there is no God?”

And she looked at me and said “Andrew, I’m a Christian BECAUSE of science!  I came to believe in God during my molecular biology courses in college.  When I analyzed all the chemical reactions that have to take place for even the simplest of simple cells to live, I knew there was no possible way all those reactions could have happened by chance.  Anyone who believes that life just spontaneously started needs to take a course in probability and statistics and really study molecular biology.  I knew then there had to be a God.”

And that led me to read books by respected scientists like Jim S. Francis, leader of the Human Genome Project and currently Director of the National Institutes of Health. 

His book “The Language of God” irritates fundamentalists and atheists alike and for that reason alone is a book that should be read!  He believes in evolution but also very clearly outlines why he believes God exists as the Creator of life.  That book helped me get over my ‘science / evolution’ block toward God. 

I stopped reading the Bible as a science book and started reading it as a letter from God to us.  And that 12 inch journey I wrote about last week of Jesus moving from my head to my heart started to happen. 

And suddenly the Bible was TOTALLY different to me…..  I was so mesmerized by its power, so warmed by its wisdom, so shattered by its sacrificial acts, that I couldn’t believe ‘The Bible’ was the same book I thought I had known since childhood.  

It became alive.  I became alive!

About 2 years ago when this process really started changing me, our church did a series of videos from regular families in the church.  I thought of it today and chuckled at some of what I saw.  I hope it brings a smile to your face as well....

As noted in the video, I tried many methods but nothing 'stuck' for the longest time.  The 'start in Matthew' process referred to began for me in the summer of 2011.  The emails began then too and this year our family went through Scripture Union's E100 Challenge during our mission trip.  

My prayer tonight is everyone reading this note has that ‘Our Town’ experience with ‘The Bible’   

God bless,

Andrew

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