Dear Reader:

Searching for Sunday is the book that our Sunday School class is studying this year. We have just started into the first couple of chapters and I find it interesting that I am relating to a young author (about my children’s ages-30’s) dubbed, collectively,  the ‘millennials.’

These are the young people who came of age around the year 2000 and the group that is leaving the church in droves. It is estimated that eight million millennials will depart before they turn thirty.

This is the group who is tired of ” culture wars and religious entanglement with party politics and power.” They don’t want to have to choose between science  and religion or intellectual integrity and faith. They want to talk about the “tough stuff”- Biblical interpretation, religious pluralism, sexuality, racial reconciliation and social justice with no “cop outs” and/or simplistic responses.

Rachel Evans explains that her generation wants to “bring their own selves through the church doors, without leaving their hearts and minds behind, without wearing a mask.” And, contrary to popular belief…they don’t want to be entertained with band music, and fog machines.

Evans points out, like many of us, she is hanging on to Christianity with her fingernails…but she is hanging on and doing it tightly. As much as she once thought that she wanted to try Christianity alone…she has since realized that she needs a community …a church to support her in her journey of faith.

Well-known author, Barbara Brown Taylor, puts it: ” In an age of information overload…the last thing any of us needs is more information about God. We need the practice of incarnation, by which God saves the lives of those whose intellectual assent has turned them dry as dust, who have run frighteningly low on the bread of life, who are dying to know more God in their bodies. Not more about God. More God!“

It was that last statement that touched the essence of my own personal search for God. We want to feel God in us or like Psalm 34:8 says: “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”

For me…it is finding that illusive “Bic lighter” to ignite the Divine Spark found in each of us. To find the portal that leads to our soul (covered and hidden by our body) and let the light out to shine on our fellowman throughout our life.

So until tomorrow…Help us Father find the Divine Spark within us that will let “our little light shine” in the darkness.

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

*Since last Thursday I have been at Edisto with the Ya’s but also with several other Erskine classmates for a mini-Erskine Reunion. Beach houses were rented out with the goal of catching up on old friendships.

So if I haven’t responded to your comments or emails or donations….I’m BACK and you are my first priority now! Tomorrow’s blog will be filled with old college memories and new ones…