As a pre-teen, the church I attended had a preacher whose family I adored and he and his wife would often ask me to babysit. They knew my family didn’t have much just like the school councilor who hired me to help her clean house a little on Saturdays.
One Sunday morning, at service, there were guests and they began speaking in tongues. A thought washed over me: Do they even know what they’re talking about? Later, during the service, my beloved preacher berated from the pulpit: Be warned; you turn your back from God, God will turn His back from you. A stronger thought washed over me: That’s not even close to true. It bothered me so much that I stopped attending the church and began to babysit less and less.
Our house had a front porch swing and one afternoon the preacher came by looking to understand my absence from the congregation. We sat there until close to dinner discussing the notion of God and abandonment. Through the translation of my Biblical understanding, he wondered what I thought.
We can turn away from the Light of the World but the Light of the World will always be there to turn back towards.
He told me my faith was stronger than his.
For me, it just felt like common sense.