As part of my application to the doctoral program I am hoping to begin in October, I am supposed to write a “spiritual autobiography”. Here’s the start of my first draft so far:\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
At 53, I know there are more years behind me on this\nplanet than are in front of me. I have recently concluded that I may well have two\nor three decades left, assuming I hit the 70- or 80-year mark. As an eternal\noptimist, I believe that these coming years could quite possibly be the most\nproductive years of my life. And as my years advance, I feel more keenly than\never that \u201cproductivity\u201d means doing whatever God calls me to within His\nkingdom.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I was born into a Christian family, but it took many years for\nme to make my faith personal. The family business was \u201cMajor\u2019s Five and Dime\u201d on\na street corner in downtown Shelbyville, Indiana. A few blocks away was First United\nMethodist Church. It is safe to say the gray Bedford stone building was much more imposing and\nimpressive than the group who gathered inside.<\/p>\n\n\n
The church was warm and friendly enough but we always struggled\nto maintain critical mass. Pastors and youth pastors came and went regularly. My\nthree brothers and I participated in Sunday school and youth group and my parents\nwere active on various committees and served as youth sponsors.<\/p>\n\n\n
When I look back now, I realize that I became a Christian\nboth \u201cbecause of\u201d and \u201cin spite of\u201d my home church. I distinctly remember\nthinking, \u201cThere must be something more to Christianity because what I see around\nme surely would not have lasted two thousand years.\u201d I became determined to\ndiscover the \u201csomething more\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n
One of the main blessings from that church came when I was a\nhigh school student and it arrived in the form of Tom and Marcia Kuhn, who\nstepped in to teach our Sunday school class. The Kuhns were mature and loving\nand talked about faith like it was real and it mattered. I had never heard of\ndaily devotions, but they challenged us to read our Bibles on a regular basis.\nSo I did.<\/p>\n\n\n
That decision changed the course of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As part of my application to the doctoral program I am hoping to begin in October, I am supposed to write a “spiritual autobiography”. Here’s the start of my first draft so far:\u00a0 At 53, I know there are more years behind me on this planet than are in front of me. I have recently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9746,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9745\/revisions\/9746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}