Sherry - 39 years old

Pete & I met Sherry in the food court at North Hill Centre sipping her Jumba Juice and looking at some children's books. We asked her if she would mind answering some questions from a spiritual questionnaire and she was quite happy to do so.  It took no time to find that Sherry was friendly, bubbly, and willing to engage in conversation.

She said that she had a religious background in the United Church when she was a kid, but that her family dropped out when they began to be involved in sports and she hasn't been back since.

"I don't know anyone who goes to church," she said.

"No one?" Pete asked.

"No. None of my friends go to church. I don't know of anyone who attends anymore."

She said that looking back on her religious experience as a kid, she would describe it with the words, "community," "fun," & "singing."

If she had the opporunity to ask God any questions, she said that she was not sure she would have any questions.

"Not even about the meaning of life? What your purpose is?"

She said, "No, I think it's up to each one of us to determine that."

"If at the end of your life, God said to you, 'Why should I let you into heaven?' what would you say?"

"You tell me," Sherry responded.  "I would say to God, You tell me what kind of person you think I am.  How would you evaluate my life?"  Sherry said she'd evaluate her own life at an 8 on a scale of 1-10.

"Do you mind if I ask you another question?" I said.

"Sure, go ahead."

"Do you believe that there is a personal God who created us?"

"Yes."

"And do you believe that there is something else awaiting us after we leave this planet?"

"Yes. Most definitely. I cannot believe this is all there is."

"You said that you wondered how God would evaluate your life," I said as Sherry nodded.  "Do you know what standard he would use to evaluate you?"

"No, I don't," she said.  "My 8 year old son was just asking me these kinds of questions recently and I didn't know what to say.  Do you know? What do you believe?"

"Thanks for asking.  I think that God will judge us by the Ten Commandments? Have you heard of those?"  Sherry nodded her head.

"I believe that we will have to give an account to our Creator of how we lived our lives against that standard.  We have all broken them, and since God is a just God, he must deal with that fact justly."  Sherry continued to nod, thinking about what we were saying.

"That's the bad news," I continued.  "But Jesus willingly took the justice our sins deserved when he died on the cross and had the sins of the world laid upon him and compressed upon him during those 6 hours he hung on the cross.  Because he did that, he can offer to us the forgiveness of our sins because that's exactly what  we need.  Jesus calls us to turn from our sins and our lives of independence, and turn in trust to him for his forgiveness and salvation."

This was clearly new to Sherry, and she seemed to be understanding it, but still made some comments that evidenced that she was still trapped in our cultural assumptions that no one can really know the truth.

I asked her if she had a New Testament, and she said she did.  I said, my name is John, and I want you to pick up the New Testament and turn to the Gospel of John and read it anew and in light of our conversation.  She said that she would, and Pete added that it might be good for her to read it with her 8 year old son (Mark) since he was asking these sorts of questions.  She seemed to be very agreeable to the idea.

She asked us what church we belonged to, and we told her about NCC.  We gave her a booklet explaining the gospel, as well as our contact info and NCC's website.  She lives about 45 minutes away in a neighboring city to Calgary, but said that she may just have to make the trip sometime if she could find a Sunday that didn't have anything else going on.

We thanked her for her conversation with us, and she thanked us as well saying that she was glad to have the opportunity to talk about these things since we don't normally do this in our culture.

--
1 John 5:13, "I write these things to you who believe in the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life."

Lord Jesus, thank you for opening a door for conversation about your Gospel, and I pray that you will use this in Sherry's life (and in her family's life) to reveal yourself to them that they may believe and have eternal life.