While in graduate school, away from the family, I had a lot of time to think about what I wanted to do with my life. My wife had always been a person of faith. I was inconsistent. I was once an agnostic. I was the master of my fate. I had fallen so low that it did not matter what I did, it would be an improvement. Despite the experiences that I had gone through God was still good.
I had memories of being 12 years old and my grand-mother taking me to church to be Baptized. The night before, she said, “You will be 12 years old tomorrow, and your sins will no longer be on me.” I had read the New Testament several times, and knew she was referencing when Jesus was taken to Passover and was questioning the scholars in the Temple.
I Couldn’t figure out what that had in common with my age. I was a good person. I had not done any of the things that I saw in there that people had gotten punished for. So I was not afraid to be responsible for myself.
When the school term ended in Ft. Lauderdale, my wife and daughter came to join me. My daughter was now a high school senior. My wife immediately found a church. The Pastor and I had worked together. He was not a pastor then. At the appropriate time he said that he wanted to make me a deacon. I was beginning to see that I was not mastering my fate very well.
One Sunday morning my daughter joined the church. She had not been interested in church. At least I thought. During children’s church she taught the Word. I was ashamed that my child had more faith than me. I remembered promising God that if He gave me a daughter, I would do everything I could to show him gratitude.
And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me” (Matthew 18:3–5).
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