My Story 12.3

Around 1950 most people made coffee into a thick syrup, pour a little in your cup and add hot milk. Add sugar according to taste and voila, .....Horrible! But Oma van den Brink always had instant coffee, I am sure it was Nescafe. That I liked. Just a little bonus for dropping in.

I was finished with High school and I had decided to figure out my life and thinking apart from the religion I had inherited. What is the real truth? One day I decided to ask Oma a few things. "Oma", I said, I want to ask you something." She was ready counsel to her grandson." What is the purpose of your life?" She looked puzzled. "Give me a minute.......I have never thought about that...." After a minute or so she brightened up and said: "The purpose of my life was, and is, the bringing up of my children." "And what is the purpose of their lives? Because if their lives have no purpose, then you have no purpose either!" "Well", she pondered, "I just never thought about such things, but let me tell you something, I have always been very happy!" I replied, in the words of Voltaire: "Yet that is a happiness I do not desire." (This "happiness" that comes as a result of NOT thinking.)

Other thinkers such as Immanuel Kant observe that they can only know what the senses tell them. Eyes can see the form, but not the essence of an object. Hearing, touch and such are all interpreted by the brain and only reveal part of an object, we cannot touch the thing itself. In other words an unseen world, a spiritual world, is possible. If I had the proper antenna built in I could detect radio waves. They are there all right but I can not detect them, unless I have the proper gadget. Spiritual beings, bacteria, other dimensions, would come to our awareness if we had the proper receiver. There is a lot more around us than we realize, but we do not have the sensors to detect them.

I was into that kind of thinking. Writing this down It sounds a bit too serious, but that is part of my Life as well. And hey, this is My Story . I found that philosophical thinking ultimately leaves you disappointed and confused. Trying to find your WAY to LIVE and finding the real TRUTH, can be so exhausting. Then you take a break and go for a delicious ice cream in a nearby parlour, and suddenly realize, wiping you chin, that this is the happiest you have been all day. When I got back to my notes that evening I summarized that I was looking for the Truth, the Way and the Life. That sounded familiar. Jesus says: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Nobody gets to the Father except by me." There is no need to figure it out any more, that has already been done. Jesus asks you and me to replace your searching with faith! Simple acceptance brings tremendous peace and joy. That night I decided then that I would be a Christian.