one year...

Today is a big anniversary for me, marking a big year. The year God showed up on the River Road in Baton Rouge, when, one year ago today, my son walked away from a collision that even now I cannot understand how he survived. That it's also the year the Saints won the Super Bowl (it's still hard to believe that's a fact), makes 2/15/09 to 2/15/10 all the easier to describe as "The Year God Showed Up". Showed up to me, and to my son. I've spent most of my free time over the past year reading about Christianity - its history, its stated theological precepts, biblical criticism, the Bible itself, various systematic studies, and I've learned alot. Most importantly, that : 1) Christianity is a difficult faith to profess, to oneself and to others; 2) faith cannot be learned in books; 3) however it can be rationalized, and for me it is helpful to understand at least some aspects of one's faith in understandable terms; 4) there's a lifetime of reading which awaits me; 5) at the end of the day, Christianity is a "physical" faith - its central premise is that God became material in the form of Jesus, its doctrines insist upon the continued physical presence of God among us, it affects each believer physically during those moments of joy which every now and then occur to let you know he's there. At least now I know it. And it's changed me, changed how I think and how I live. Big year indeed.