The Rest of the Story

       Was I really slipping away in my understanding of truth? That’s what I wondered when I left my aunt’s funeral. Anyone can be deceived, but I thought I had a solid grip on basic teachings of the Christian faith. So why couldn’t I hear the heresy in Aunt Alice’s funeral? She belonged to a cult; falsehood had to be there!

            I couldn’t wait to find talk with my family and find out if they were as mystified and disturbed as I was. In short order there was a reassuring consensus. Everyone had concluded the same thing that I had. What had gone on, no one knew, and it gnawed on me the rest of the day and into the evening until I couldn’t stand it.

            So I picked up the phone.

            I was a little nervous when my cousin answered my call, but I was driven by my desire to know the truth. After expressing my perplexity, my cousin told me an amazing story.

Aunt Alice and me in 1981

            After the founder of the World Wide Church of God had died, the leadership of the organization began to examine its teaching in light of Scripture. They even turned to well-known and respected Bible scholars who helped them in their study. Eventually the leadership concluded the teachings were false, and they changed them to align with the Bible. They sent out corrected information to their congregants.

            Independently of each other, both my aunt and cousin read the new teachings. “Have we been wrong all along?” they asked themselves. Before long they became genuinely convince of the truth of Scripture and accepted the teachings of the church, which now based salvation upon the work of Christ, not the works of individuals.

            I was astonished by my cousin’s story. She and my aunt had stepped from the darkness into the Light of God’s truth and embraced it. I would see my aunt again!

            I couldn’t wait to call my father to tell him the news about his sister. I knew he didn’t know this story!

 When I finished talking, Dad was so quiet.  Why wasn’t he jumping up and down, at least figuratively? One mystery was solved, and another sprang up! That night explaining one was enough.

Sometimes I’m like a dog with a bone. I just can’t leave some things alone. This was one of those bones. Why wasn’t Dad happy about this? She was his sister. What was he thinking? There was only one way to find out. I called up some time later.

“Dad, why were you so quiet when I told you about Aunt Alice?” I asked over the phone.

His reply knocked me over.

 “Because I prayed too small.”

“What do you mean?”

“I prayed too small. I only prayed for my sister to come out of the cult, not all the other people!”

“Oh, Dad!”

I was practically in tears at his remorse. For fifty years my father had prayed for his sister. Fifty. And he was now sorry that he hadn’t prayed “bigger.”

“But Dad, God took your prayers and those of so many others, and look what he did. He transformed a cult into a Bible-believing church, and Aunt Alice came into God’s family.”

And it was true. The change in the World Wide Church of God was unprecedented! Nothing, nothing like hat had ever happened before.

So when I get a little blue, think nothing is changing, God’s a bit off schedule to suit me, I remember my Aunt Alice, my cousin, the half century that my father prayed for his sister, and the thought that whether I pray “small” or capture a vision and pray “bigger,” God is at work! He does the impossible!