I wrote this article more than seven years ago, when my dad was still playing tennis most mornings and seemed invincible. Now he is dying. On Wednesday I will fly to L.A. to see him, perhaps for the last time. He has not seen a doctor in 45 years, yet it is clear that he has Parkinson’s and maybe something else. He is not well. He is in bed more than 20 hours a day, he shuffles along using the furniture and walls for balance and he has fallen silent. It is sad to see a man, who played tennis so well that I was helpless to return his serves, unable to stand upright.
Although he has not left the house for a month or more, he holds fast to his hope that he will be healed by Christian Science. I believe he is dying and am praying that he will come to the end of himself and cry out to Jesus.
Please pray for me as I travel, June 3 to 10, and enjoy this piece which was originally published in Virtue Magazine. It seems especially poignant to me now and was never more true.
I wasn’t raised in a Christian home. I was ten before I heard the gospel for the first time when a school chum invited me to her Sunday school. I’d been to Sunday school a handful of times before, but this Sunday school was different. It was held in a small garage behind an old house–a relic from the days before the church owned the property. My friend and I sat in the old garage, carpet at our feet but the garage door still visible straight ahead. I remember listening to the thin, gray-haired lady who led the singing up front. She talks about God like she knows Him, I thought. I had never heard anyone speak of God in this way. How could this be? I wondered. Could anyone really know God the way they knew their mother or father? Their brothers or sisters?
Posted by emstalcup 
