Cloud and Fire

On my annual cycle travels around Scotland I had to stop for a day as there was a heat wave! So I spent a good day around the town of Banff, trying to get out of unexpectedly hot July sun.

In the evening, relaxing in a pub with a cold beer, a chap called Brian (not his real name) began to engage me in conversation. After finding out I was a pastor, we began on a philosophical discussion. Brian was searching, he had been for many years, and it seemed to me it was driving him to develop him own ‘way’, as he sought to find peace and separation from the anxiety in his head and the thoughts that sought to overwhelm him.

He had read many philosophers, he had communed with chatGTP (AI), and had explored several Eastern philosophies of faith. His synopsis of the latter was that it all seemed to be too much about Budda, and that the people who proclaimed themselves as teachers were all still searching themselves, they had no answers for him only an empty philosophy that left him detached from the world he lives in.

I told him my story, ‘in order to be grounded’, I related, ‘knowing Jesus is the way in which I have come to know God, and really experiencing his forgiveness, all the way through, keeps me at peace’. I then attempted to explain that the knowability of God (the divine) ‘for me’ is through the personhood of Jesus.

Brian, for all his searching told me he had himself encountered the person of Jesus in a vision… and yet I could see he was not ready to yet take the narrow path, even though he had had this amazing encounter.

As we said our goodbyes I felt that his own need to find another unique way of incorporating ‘all ways’ had left him ungrounded and not ready to listen to the call of Jesus on his life. I pray one day he finds the way and Jesus welcomes him in.

However, I am left wondering, if people enter our lives or churches unexpectedly with searching questions will they encounter Jesus, or simply religious behaviour instead?