I Love the Word 'Saved'
by Glenn Mollette

I was about six years old when I was walking home from my grandpa's country grocery store. We lived across a creek down a gravel lane with a front porch and a big yard. It was almost dark and suddenly I heard all this noise coming from the front porch and was uncertain who was making the noise. When I got close to the porch I saw it was my mother and father embracing. They were talking loud with their hands outstretched toward the sky and there were tears coming down my dad's face. I took a seat on the porch for a minute but was frightened by the spectacle and quickly went into the house. An hour later the house was back to normal and I found my mother in the back bedroom of the house sewing. "What was going on out there," I asked bewildered. With an uplifting smile she responded "Your dad was just saved."

I was clueless about what she meant. Saved from what? He seemed fine to me.

A couple of days later we were in a church on Sunday which was odd for our family. My dad went forward during the invitation and was on his knees at the front. I couldn't figure it out.

Two hours later we all went down to this wide place in the creek and he and two other family members were dunked by two men in white shirts . They came out soaked.

I didn't understand anything about it but later would come to understand. My dad had changed his direction in life and was saved from separation from God to a life of fellowship with God through Jesus. He spent the rest of his life active in his church, singing in the choir and doing whatever he could to be helpful to his church and others. He was never perfect by any stretch but often the grace of God worked through him in ways I'm not sure I've yet experienced or even expressed in my own Christian journey.

The Christian life begins with being saved and then doing all we can to tell the good news of Christ so that others might be saved.

"And there is salvation in and through no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by and in which we must be saved," Acts 4.12

Thursday, May 31, 2007

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