Worldviews
In Chapter 2, "Glimpses of God," I write about being
given a great gift. The gift I was
offered as a young person was a way to understand this world and myself in it. This was a worldview that
reflected God's own perspective and purpose for His creation, and for me. This world will offer us its own perspectives;
we know this as a materialistic perspective or secular perspective on
life. I write about my encounters with
these worldviews in Chapter 4.
Had I not been given this God-perspective, and if it had not
been built upon and reinforced in ways I writer about in Chapter 7, my life
would have been greatly diminished and impoverished. That is as clear to me as
the nose on my face (given that I have a "Hartley nose," that is
saying something). In fact, I think that
would have been the end of my story, at least a story worth writing about.
Chapter 2 talks about how this Godly worldview was conveyed to
me. It describes a confluence of four
streams that let me know I was a child of God and an inheritor of something
reaching far beyond this world and far bigger than myself.
Those four streams were: my Godly parents; my church family at St.
Andrews, Mt. Pleasant; my schooling at Porter; and my experiencing Kanuga
Conference Center as my "Thin Place" with God.
These early experiences were life-shaping, and I do not think at
all that I am exaggerating to think that they were also life-saving
experiences. They gave me life in
abundance as Jesus talks about in John10:10 (life to the full as some
translations have it). Thanks be to
God!
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