Does it matter if you take your kids to church? Even if they hate it and fuss? Even if as teens or young adults they dismiss the Gospel? Take heart! Here’s a small part of my salvation story.
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My parents always took me to church. Can you identify?
So, I learned Bible stories. Moses parting the Red Sea. Daniel in the den with lockjaw lions. The star of Bethlehem, and a baby boy born in a barn.
I learned hymns, “On a hill far away, stood an old rugged cross, the emblem of suffering and shame…”
I liked the ones in a minor key that sounded mysterious and ethereal, “Oh come, oh come Emmanuel and ransom captive Israel…” But who was Emmanuel? Why did we want him to come? And ransomcaptiveisrael was just one long nonsense word.
One of my favorites had a Celtic tune full of longing, but what did, “Be thou my vision oh Lord of my heart…” even mean?
My childhood church was blonde in every sense of the word. We were a white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant congregation. The pews, pulpit, and rafters were made of honey-colored oak. Behind the pulpits were two choir stalls. Men on one side, women on the other, all wearing red robes with white satin collars. And at the end of every service, a boy, also robed, walked ceremoniously to the altar, and snuffed the candles using a long brass rod. It looked like fun, and I wondered why girls never got to do it.
The cross on the back wall was engraved with the letters INRI? That wasn’t a word, so I always wondered what it meant.
Fast forward to my junior year in college spent studying abroad in London, England. On weekends, classmates and I did lots of sightseeing. Among the places of interest were innumerable cathedrals. I saw Westminster Abbey with famous saints and poets entombed in its walls and St. Paul’s, an architectural wonder.
But it was Salisbury Cathedral that rocked me to my core. Begun in 1220, it’s spire, the tallest in England, was completed in 1320. The façade alone was breathtaking. Walking down the nave, my footsteps echoing on ancient stones, I felt the brevity of my human span. Lifting my gaze to Gothic arches high above, I’d never felt so small. Dwarfed by stained-glass magnificence, something deep within me wanted to kneel—but I was with my classmates, so I stuffed my awe and followed the group back to the bus.
A few miles north, we stopped at Stonehenge, a circular array of megaliths set on a green plain pocked with sheep. It was massive, impossible, a prehistoric wonder aimed at light in a dreary land. Still mysterious in many ways, it seemed to shout man’s desperate need to worship something.
Flash forward, another decade to when I struggled as a stay-at-home mom and narrowly avoided a divorce. I hadn’t been to a church in years, and didn’t consider myself a believer, but when a neighbor invited me to her plain blonde church, I said yes and found myself full circle, back in the basement for adult Sunday School. But Jesus and I were different now. He was no longer a baby doll in a manger scene, and I was no longer an innocent child.
A week before Christmas a red-robed choir filled the dais. The accompanist began Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, and thunderous praise rose to simple rafters. Can you hear the music?
“For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.”
I suddenly felt as puny as I did in Salisbury Cathedral.
The choir continued,
“The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord.
And of His Christ, and of His Christ.”
I now knew that Christ is the Greek word for Messiah,
The chorus continued,
“And He shall reign for ever and ever.”
I’d seen how since Neolithic times, men have looked for the light.
The bass voices bellowed,
“King of Kings.”
And I recalled the letters INRI engraved at the top of the cross. Now I knew what they stood for, Ieusus Nazarenus Rex Ludaeorum, the initials for the Latin Jesus the Nazarene King of the Jews. The words Pontius Pilate had written above the cross where Jesus’ corpse was pinned like a butterfly in grotesque display.
The sopranos echoed,
“and Lord of Lords.”
The grandeur of the oratorio rolled over me like an ocean swell, and suddenly my soul understood the necessity for Jesus’ sacrifice, as bloody as any pagan ritual. It was the ransom paid for the primordial evil that wreaks havoc here on earth. And, finally I comprehended the hymn I’d sung as a child, Jesus was Emmanuel, God come in bodily form to rescue people like me, captive of my own shame and regret.
That’s the thing about music, it somehow bypasses the brain and speaks directly to the heart. A church, I discovered, is not an edifice no matter how magnificent, no matter the history buried in its walls, but rather people whose hearts are desperate for God and cast their vision to his Messiah the light of the world.
All those years my parents made me go to church, surely this is what they were hoping—that my heart would find its hallelujah in Christ and sing in chorus with the congregation.
“Forever and ever, Amen!”
So readers, if you worry about your children and their salvation, take courage. You never know how or when God will give the gift of his grace to those you love. Merry Christmas!
“I want you to know that you can fully rely on the things you have been taught about Jesus, God’s anointed one.” The Messiah!
Luke 1:4 (VOICE)
Cover photo by David Beale on Unsplash
