an unusual publishing deal

As a child in church, I often absorbed and toyed with bible-referencing watchwords many Christians make use of (only now do I recognize their value in helping us galvanize a common understanding of our shared faith).... Inevitably, as most children do, I heard or imagined many things differently than they were meant to be communicated (ex: one of our ladies who enjoyed bringing special music to the congregation often sang "People Need the Lord", the title line of which I innocently misinterpreted to be, "people need amor" -- and I thought she meant Amor brand tinned cat chow! To this day, you can occasionally catch me crooning "peeeeople neeeed cat foooood" around the house when I'm feeling frisky.)

In my innocent mind, the idea of what our pastor called "the Lamb's Book of Life" (ex: the ledger where your name is recorded in heaven when you are saved) played huge havoc in my mind for some reason.... What if the writer misspells my name? I thought. Or worse, what if he smudges or erases it?!

Being my proactive little self, I decided to write my own book in my head (which, for some psycho reason, I believed God would be able to open like a ripe melon and look inside where I myself had recorded my first profession of faith in Christ), which I envisioned as a leather-bound, handstitched tome containing each important memory of my life I would want to share with him, starting at the moment I was saved when I was six.

I know that some people would point to this instance as proof that a child of so few years is capable of comprehending the essence of faith -- believing blindly in the unseen. I hold a different, perhaps more optimistic view: God invites us to try Him, to let Him prove to us that He loves us beyond all comprehension and that we can trust Him in ALL things.