Alien Drums

God is on Interstate 30 in southwest Arkansas tonight. Of course, He’s in other places, as well; but I met him in Arkansas.

We are driving south back to Texas. My wife is driving, and I’m now typing. The magic of an air card gives me Internet connection as we drive, although somewhat intermittently in Arkansa.

This encounter has been building. Let me work backwards.

About dark, my wife took over the driving, and I reclined in the passenger’s seat. Casting Crowns played in the stereo. As their CD “Lifesongs” came to the end, my wife said she wanted to listen again. Then the second song came up again, “Praise You in This Storm.” An hour earlier, when I was driving and it played, I told my wife that I would like this song played at my funeral; she said she wanted the same thing. The second time around, this song just grabbed me again. It always does; it’s just one of those songs that connects.

Now, let me go back a few of hours. After an afternoon of strolling around Memphis, we returned to our downtown hotel only to learn the car had been towed. It was complicated; but the hotel had parked it illegally but gave me the key. I tried to be kind but firm, and eventually they paid the $135 to get it out of the city pound. Frustrating, but not a freak-out time.

Back a little further, my youngest son and I sat at an outdoor table and enjoyed some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream after visiting the famous ducks at The Peabody. Several times he said how much fun he had with just the two of us spending time together.

Back another step, my son and I visited The Lorraine Hotel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. The National Civil Rights Museum is attached. It reflects the history of African Americans in America–an excruciatingly sad and disturbing tale. The first part of the museum ends in the room adjacent to where Dr. King spent his last night. The wall between the two rooms has been replaced with glass. It’s like being a voyeur into the past of 40 years ago–the bed covers disturbed and used cigarettes snuffed out in an ashtray. To think back to what lay on the other side of the door–death–the end of one life, but the beginning of the impact of a martyr.

Back to the night before, a woman at the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship General Assembly spoke about ministry to prostitutes and strippers in Europe. She spoke of just loving them in the name of Christ and seeing how God touched them, healed them, changed them gradually, not always perfectly.

Back to the dinner before hosted by Associated Baptist Press and reminders of the impact for good of a free press in America, specifically in the civil rights movement. It made me proud that I had been a journalist, even though I no longer practice the art; and it reminded me of why I became a journalist in the first place. Kate Campbell sang an amazing song, “Freedom Train.” Moved; I was moved.

One more step back, I heard John Killinger speak about salvation. His view is not a common view among Baptists; it is a more open, freer way of understanding salvation.

Enough backward looking. It all built up in me, so that as God turned out the heavenly lights and my wife took the wheel of the car, I had time to think. I believe God told me something, but I’m going to sleep on it before I share it.

No, wait. I must give the nutshell now before new light scares the thought away.

I think conservative, so-called Bible-believing Christianity has gotten it all wrong, which means I have gotten it wrong for so long, way too long. I simply think real faith in Christ should produce more people who are really like Christ. It’s time to really get serious about loving God and loving people. And doing that, I suspect, is going to mean that I’m going to have to get more serious about putting Christ at the center of my faith and interpret all of the other parts of Scripture, including Paul, by what Christ said and did.

I need night to think; but there it is in a nutshell. Nothing drastic for me; but it is for me.