Years ago I published a book, A Heart Hungry to Worship, (available on Amazon) that focused on relating the stories of Biblical characters to people I have encountered in my ministry. For 2024 I would like to upload a chapter at a time to encourage people. Below is the first chapter from the book. Yet, if he would, man cannot live all to this world. If not religious, he will be superstitious. If he worships not the true God, he will have his idols.[1]
Chapter 1
Sheila and Maggie’s Stories
Sheila is a creative, vibrant woman in her mid-twenties who is the new owner of her own art gallery. Response in the first few months has been better than expected, but her expectations were not high to begin with.
Sheila is grateful for a chance to start her life over, given that she almost ruined it during her high school years. Known as a wild party girl, Sheila led a life filled with alcohol, drugs and numerous boyfriends. Finding herself pregnant after graduation shocked her. She got an abortion before anyone knew she was pregnant. To her surprise, the experience was not as easy or painless as she believed it would be. The scarring caused by the procedure rendered her incapable of bearing children; nightmares still haunt her sleep two or three times each week.
Her parents are distant. Her mother is an alcoholic, wrapped up in her own miseries, while her father, disgusted by her behavior in high school, has pretty much disowned her. Sheila knows her lifestyle has to change, but the pull of friends who still view her as the party girl is strong. So is facing the continual scrutiny and gossip in her small town.
For the first time in her life, Sheila is contemplating spiritual things. She tried reading an old family Bible a few times, but she could not understand the Victorian-era English. Twice she even tried attending church. Since she had no idea what any of them believed, she tried the large church downtown first. Sheila reasoned that she would be anonymous in a large crowd.
She came away disappointed. She felt as if she had stepped into a cold marble vault. Everything was very solemn and the service was spoken in a foreign language. She did not know when to stand, sit, or when to respond. She could see that for many people it was a meaningful experience, but for her it was just confusing.
The next week she chose a nearby church that had a more modern feel about it. The atmosphere in this church was different: vibrant and alive. While the songs were unfamiliar, at least they were upbeat and the people singing them seemed happy. Then, unexpectedly, multiple people started talking loudly in what sounded to her like multiple languages. When it reached a crescendo, Sheila was out the door, shaken and confused. Maybe a person had to learn another language to be a Christian. If that was the case, she was out of luck. The one semester of French she took in high school had been a spectacular failure.
It will be awhile before Sheila ventures to church again. Maybe, if she could go with someone who could explain what was going on, she would try. Which church would accept someone with her past, though? The people at the churches she visited already looked like they had their lives together.
Sheila feels guilty about her abortion and believes God will punish her for it. While she longs to know Him, she is deathly afraid of meeting Him because of her past actions. She has reached the point where something has to change in her life. She wonders, “Is there any hope for a person like me? Is there any way to bury the demons from my past that haunt me?”
Sheila has one last straw to which she is clinging. She has a Christian friend that has been supportive and willing to listen to her pour out her heart during late night phone calls. She has kept him at a distance because of her fear of being too vulnerable. He has offered to take her to his church sometime or even hold a Bible study with her.
Maybe, just maybe, Sheila thinks, she will be able to find answers to her questions. While she is not yet ready to visit another church, she is willing to study the Bible with someone who knows and accepts her as a person. Perhaps there is hope for someone like her. There needs to be because she does not think she can face fifty more years like her first twenty-five.
Maggie has just turned forty. A hard working single mother, Maggie has struggled with finding meaningful relationships all of her life. Maggie experienced sexual abuse, as did her older sister, by a distant relative. As is all too often in small communities, where just about everyone is somehow related, very few believed her story and those who did wanted this dirty secret covered up so as not to bring scandal or embarrassment to the family.
Maggie married young and had two children with a man who turned out to have a problem with drugs. Not wanting to have her children raised around a drug addict, it was not long before she filed for divorce. After their divorce, she married again, this time to a person who promised her the world but who crushed her spirit by cheating on her. After moving, with three children, to a new town in order to start over, she attempted marriage number three. This marriage started fine but quickly soured due to the suspicious and jealous nature of her husband. Verbal and emotional abuse took its toll and this marriage collapsed after only a few years.
Maggie vowed not to marry again. She threw herself into her work and her children’s lives. After the oldest two graduated high school, she began to think about herself. She felt she deserved love but was scared and hesitant to make herself vulnerable again.
When an old boyfriend from high school came back into her life, she wondered if he was the love she had been looking for all along.
The first month flew by. So much for taking it slow, she was falling head over heels in love. He seemed to care about her and her children. He was attentive and caring. Then he got drunk and physically abusive one night and her world shattered, again. “Never again!” she vowed, would she allow herself to open up to anyone who would hurt her. Deep down, though, Maggie still desired to be loved and to love back. Her fear is that her desire for love will open herself up to hurt again.
Maggie has one philosophy that she believes in: “Everything happens for a reason.” She just cannot grasp the reason behind what has happened to her. “Why was I abused?” ” Why has every marriage failed?” “Why have all my relationships fallen apart when I try so hard?” “When will I ever find love?”
Maggie thinks of God from time to time. She believes in God, at least the little she has heard about Him. She has only been to church a few times in her life, mostly for funerals. What she believes about God is that He is a person worth knowing, someone who is perfect and holy and who expects His followers to be that way. She doesn’t feel she would qualify to be a follower because of her past failures. She doesn’t believe that God would want anything to do with her. Maggie lives without hope and truly believes she will spend life after death in hell; “After all,” she thinks, “It cannot be much worse than the life I am living now.”
Deep down she would like a relationship she can count on, but she is so terrified of being disappointed again that she is not even willing to give God a chance to initiate one with her.
Maggie and Sheila’s stories are not unique. In fact, their stories are of people I know and work with who have had similar life experiences. I count them as my friends but I have yet to penetrate the shields they have erected around their lives.
I long to offer them the hope they so desperately need but are afraid to accept. We talk often, especially when crisis happens in their life. They know they need help beyond that which humans can offer, but they are not ready to ask God. Their reasoning is simple: “God is my only hope and if He lets me down, I truly have nothing and no one left.”
The Bible contains the story of a person just like Maggie and Sheila. With a past that haunts her, this woman finds herself constantly entering one failed relationship after another. A woman who is desperate to find love, who wants to believe that God can love her, but who struggles to make sense of the world she finds herself in. Let us look at her story.
[1] Theodore Parker, The Transient and the Permanent
ta ethne 