LET'S TALK ABOUT . . .



                                               "QUIET GRACE IN STORMY TIMES"


In my last blog I left you at the bedside of a nineteen year old girl whose life was in crisis.  Looking back now I realize I was standing at a crossroad, in the midst of some kind of existential crisis that was demanding a response.  The forces pulling on my life externally were powerfully pulling me in one direction.  Internally, "something" was drawing me; it was different than anything I had ever experienced except for what I had felt stirring in me a year earlier. . .

After high school I had scholarships to the three state universities and one to Grand Canyon College.  I chose the latter because it offered eighty per cent of tuition and fees as long as I kept my grades above a certain grade point average.  I needed that help so I registered as a math major and plunged  into my studies. The only requirement peculiar to that school was that every student was required to take three religious courses: Old and New Testament survey courses plus one upper division course.

My Old Testament professor was a gentle giant of a man, Dr. William Hintze.  His wife Barb was in my Calculus & Analytical Geometry class.  They had been missionaries in Quito, Ecuador for years.  Not having been raised in a religious home or "Sunday schooled," I was unfamiliar with the subject matter.  My only goal was to get an "A" and keep my scholarship. I was relieved when I had Dr. Hintze for New Testament the following semester because it meant I only had to learn the course material, I was familiar with the professor. His humble brilliance added appeal to his presentations.

Early one morning while studying for a quiz, I felt like my "eyes were open" to understanding the story of the Bible. I felt a gentle pull inside of myself to surrender to the truth I was understanding on more than just an intellectual level.  I cried, I prayed, I embraced by faith that Jesus was the Christ, the Old Testament Messiah. I had no idea, no framework, to understand what had just happened.  I knew something was different but couldn't put my finger on it; so I just kept going.

That same gentle pull was at work on and in me a year later in the hospital.  Internally I experienced it as "quietly inviting and settling;" and yet, I sensed it was going to have external implications that might be somewhat "intrusive" in terms of my life choices. I knew that what had been revealed to me, what I had caught a glimpse of, was one of life's mysteries.

What was even more intriguing to me was that the pull of the quiet was stronger than the power of any external force in my life. I spent the first ten years of my life growing up in "tornado alley." I was intrigued as a little girl with the profound and utter quiet in the "eye" of those storms. I wanted to know more of this gentle quiet in the storms of life.  I wished I could learn to live there.  I had no idea what that would mean.  Do you know that reality?

Until next time . . .this is, Just Janice!