Let me start by explaining a little about me. When I was a young I went to Sunday School at the local Episcopal church. As I got older I was an acolyte. During this time I became friends with someone who went to another Episcopal church that was a very high church, it was very close to the old Catholic church in that part of the service was chanted, they used an incense burner, etc., I then went to church for a while. Then when I went to college I stopped going to church and became basically an agnostic.
Over New Years we took a trip to Hershey Pa, on the way we went through PA Dutch County. We made a stop at the Ephrata Cloister. This was an early religious community dating from about 1732. I won't go into the history of the Cloister, if you want more information go to their web site at http://www.ephratacloister.org/.
I don't know exactly what happened to me because of my visit there, whether it was something spiritual or just curiosity, they spent a large portion of their day studying the bible, what do they get from doing that? Whatever the reason once I got back home I started reading an old bible that we had. I also started looking around web sites for help in studying/understanding the bible. I found a site Christianity.com that seems to fit my current desires and interest. It has a section on the "Bible in a Year". I have started trying to read this every day. I am now trying to find a site and it may be on Christianity.com that explains what I am reading.
Just a few days after I started reading the Bible, the U.S.Airways plane crashed landed into the Hudson River. While I don't want to take anything away from the great crew, if there is indeed a God, he certainly had is hand in this miracle.
Let me explain the next thing that happened to help me believe in God and that I am doing the right thing in trying to understand the Bible. I went to northern Rhode Island on Tuesday to visit my nephew, his family and my late brother's widow. If you remember the day was snowy. I left Rhode Island around 3:30pm and reached I395 and found the road snow covered with what looked like clear areas where the wheels of the vehicles traveled. Well apparently the clear areas were not clear, but was icy. After several miles of travel the rear end of my SUV started fish tailing, I tried to recover, but it kept getting worse. I eventually found myself headed off the right side of the road. Fortunately there was a hill on that side of the road which I started to go up, I was able to regain control and bring the car back down onto the road. I was very fortunate that where I went off the road there were no guard rails, rock out croppings and the trees were far enough up the slope that I didn't hit anything and whatever other traffic that was on the road didn't hit me. When I got back onto the road I coasted to a stop on the shoulder and thanked GOD for saving me. I can't believe how lucky I was, just the thought of what happened still sends shivers up my spine.
That same night I couldn't sleep, probably because I was still hyper over the near disaster. My wife has the radio on all night and it is always tuned to WELI, late at night they have on a program called Coast to Coast AM. Even though I wasn't really listening but the show was about Angels. I don't know but that had to be more than coincidence.
So where is all this leading me? Maybe it is just a passing fascination, maybe it the real beginnings of understanding, only time will tell.
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