Rooted in Love
What St. Paul and a Teenage Prayer Taught Me About the Deepest Reality of the Universe
Welcome to today’s reflection.
Some experiences never leave you.
They don’t fade with time or become resolved in hindsight. If anything, they grow, unfolding new meaning as the years pass.
This reflection begins with one such moment.
A teenage prayer, whispered in the dark, that opened into something far bigger than belief and led me to see Paul’s words, and my whole universe, in an entirely different light.
A Night That Changed Everything
I was fifteen, at a Christian camp and, to be honest, I was fed up.
My friends all seemed to “get it.” They talked about Jesus, prayed with passion and raised their hands in worship. I didn’t. I understood the ideas in my head, but did not feel them in my heart.
That night, lying in my sleeping bag while the others slept, I prayed a simple prayer: “If you’re real, God, show yourself to me.”
What happened next is something, even now, I find difficult to describe. I felt a tingling in my toes that spread upward through my body until I was completely overwhelmed by what I can only describe as pure love. Not the sentimental kind, but something far greater. A force. A presence. A love so vast and real that it undid me completely. I sobbed like a child.
That night, I didn’t come to believe in God. I knew. I also knew that this thing we call “God” is far more powerful and real than I could possibly comprehend.
I remember stumbling out of my tent, desperate to find a camp leader and tell someone. He was kind and understanding, if a little bemused.
But as I write about that night all these years later, I’m aware of how far my words fall short. I can only point toward it, try to describe it and do my best to put language around the indescribable.
That’s where the Bible is helpful.
