Leave it to your kids to keep you honest. When my son (from my brief first marriage) and step-son (from his brief first marriage) were in early elementary school, and our daughters were babies, those little guys were very interested in going to church (little people usually are). So, of course, as good parents, we needed to look into that. Around this time of year, I set myself a goal to settle into a church before Christmas.

But that was going to be harder than it sounds. My husband and I came from different religious traditions, and it appeared irreconcilable. Until I found our Bibles. Having both been brought up in traditions that teach the Bible, we agreed that we would look for a church that taught it as authority. The Bible was to be our standard. But neither of us had actually READ it. It appeared that the only way we would know if a church was “worthy” would be to read the Bible. Coincidentally, about that time I unpacked the box which contained Bibles we both were given as a kid.

Now, I had tried previously to read the Bible, but always gave up before the end of Exodus. This time, however, one of the Bibles I found was a New Testament only. (This is my best tip if you’ve never read the Bible: start with the New Testament!) I began sometime in October; by November, I was a new creation. By the end of the following year, I had read the entire Bible. (Did I mention that I was also working full-time?)

Here’s what I found:

* John 14:6~ Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

Frankly, that was a relief to me. I had never quite been successful at getting my brain around how all sorts of various things could be true at the same time.

* Romans 10:9~ that if you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved;

And, you know, I had always believed that Jesus had died for my sins, been buried, and resurrected from the dead; what I never understood until that moment was that it was ALL of my sins. Not just those that I confessed. (How could I ever remember them all?)

Well, folks, it’s not up to me. All my sins were in the future when Jesus died on the cross, and He, being God, knew about them all.

And He did it anyway.