Things I know about: I know about church, well at least the Bible and Baptist kind. As my pastor says, I was carried to church, and then dragged to church, and finally I came on my own accord. In some ways that is probably true for me. I don't like to think of myself as religious although I probably am. I'd like to of beliefs as more personal. But regardless, church is a big part of my life. Each week, for 46 years, I have attended at least two services if not three, Sunday School, church, evening church, and Wednesday night prayer service. Many weeks there are other events to, so church is a familiar place for me. I try to remember it as a hospital and not a museum or a military battleground, where the wounded are shot. People from all kinds of backgrounds and of all ages form a family of types, sometimes closer than one's biological or nuclear family. No only is it a place of religious instruction and correction, but a place of friendships. My husband and I have been members at our church since the Sunday we returned from our honeymoon, over twenty five years ago. We have had the same pastor all that time too. Over two and half decades I could recount to you tens of family and hundreds of people who have passes through our simple country doors. Some stopping in only for a visit briefly, others for weeks, and some for years, but few for decades. I wonder why that is? Is it like the parable of the seeds planted in different ground? Some taking root and others choked out? For me, it has been a saving grace, beside the obvious salvation from hell and damnation, (was that too strong?), I have expanded my family. I have friends I can call upon in the middle of night when the bleeding hasn't stop, and I've already been to two ERs who have sent me home. But I give too. I come when my friend's two daughters need me as she is being put on a gunnery and placed in an ambulance for her late-term miscarriage.
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