{"id":20904,"date":"2013-02-25T09:24:50","date_gmt":"2013-02-25T07:24:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/?p=20904"},"modified":"2013-02-25T10:06:01","modified_gmt":"2013-02-25T08:06:01","slug":"do-you-think-ill-ever-find-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/story\/do-you-think-ill-ever-find-god\/","title":{"rendered":"Do you think I’ll ever find God?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"praisegod\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Some 14 years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our opening session in the theology of faith. That was the day I first saw Tommy. He was combing his hair, which hung six inches below his shoulders. My quick judgment wrote him off as strange \u2013 very strange.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tommy turned out to be my biggest challenge. He constantly objected to or smirked at the possibility of an unconditionally loving God. When he turned in his final exam at the end of the course, he asked in a slightly cynical tone, \u201cDo you think I\u2019ll ever find God?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cNo,\u201d I said emphatically.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOh,\u201d he responded. \u201cI thought that was the product you were pushing.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

I let him get five steps from the door and then called out. \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019ll ever find him, but I am certain he will find you.\u201d Tommy shrugged and left. I felt slightly disappointed that he had missed my clever line.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Later I heard that Tommy had graduated, and I was grateful for that. Then came a sad report: Tommy had terminal cancer. Before I could search him out, he came to me. When he walked into my office, his body was badly wasted, and his long hair had fallen out because of chemotherapy. But his eyes were bright and his voice, for the first time, was firm.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTommy! I\u2019ve thought about you so often. I heard you were very sick,\u201d I blurted out.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cOh, yes, very sick. I have cancer. It\u2019s a matter of weeks.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cAre you able to talk about it?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSure. What would you like to know?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s it like to be only 24 and know that you\u2019re dying?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt could be worse,\u201d he told me, \u201clike being 50 and thinking that drinking booze, seducing women and making money are the real \u2018biggies\u2019 in life.\u201d Then he told me why he had come.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was something you said to me on the last day of class. I asked if you thought I would ever find God and you said no, which surprised me. Then you said, \u2018But He will find you.\u2019 I thought about that a lot, even though my search for God was hardly intense at that time.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cBut when the doctors removed a lump from my groin and told me that it was malignant, I got serious about locating God. And when the malignancy spread into my vital organs, I really began banging against the bronze doors of heaven. But nothing happened. Well, one day I woke up, and instead of my desperate attempts to get some kind of message, I just quit. I decided I didn\u2019t really care about God, an afterlife, or anything like that.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI decided to spend what time I had left doing something more important. I thought about you and something else you had said: \u2018The essential sadness is to go through life without loving. But it would be almost equally sad to leave this world without ever telling those you loved that you loved them.\u2019 So I began with the hardest one: my dad.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tommy\u2019s father had been reading the newspaper when his son approached him.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDad, I would like to talk with you.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, talk.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI mean, it\u2019s really important.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

The newspaper came down three slow inches. \u201cWhat is it?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cDad, I love you. I just wanted you to know that.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Tommy smiled at me as he recounted the moment. \u201cThe newspaper fluttered to the floor. Then my father did two things I couldn\u2019t remember him doing before. He cried and he hugged me. And we talked all night, even though he had to go to work the next morning.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was easier with my mother and little brother,\u201d Tommy continued.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThey cried with me, and we hugged one another, and shared the things we had been keeping secret for so long. Here I was, in the shadow of death, and I was just beginning to open up to all the people I had actually been close to.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThen one day I turned around and God was there. He didn\u2019t come to me when I pleaded with him. Apparently he does things in his own way and at his own hour. The important thing is that you were right. He found me even after I stopped looking for him.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cTommy,\u201d I added, \u201ccould I ask you a favor? Would you come to my theology-of-faith course and tell my students what you told me?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

Though we scheduled a date, he never made it. Of course, his life was not really ended by his death, only changed. He made the great step from faith into vision. He found a life far more beautiful than the eye of humanity has ever seen or the mind ever imagined.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Before he died, we talked one last time. \u201cI\u2019m not going to make it to your class,\u201d he said.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI know, Tommy.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWill you tell them for me? Will you . . . tell them that God found me?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI will, Tommy. I\u2019ll tell them.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some 14 years ago, I stood watching my university students file into the classroom for our opening session in the theology of faith. That was the day I first saw […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20904"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20908,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20904\/revisions\/20908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}