Psalm 31 says in part: “… I trust in you, O Lord; I say, ‘You are my God. My times are in your hand.'”

It reminds me of my first year in seminary. I had gone not because I was on fire for God, but because in college I had lost my faith and I determined to spend a year testing whether a God existed and if so whether I needed to do something about it. Come spring semester and I hadn’t seen any sign of God at all. I decided I would go to every church service of every sort around the University of Chicago campus and it was marvelous how many there were. By mid April I felt exhausted emotionally without having solved anything. I realized I truly wanted God to exist, desperately so.

The Methodist Campus group was putting on a vesper service on the Lord’s Prayer and I went, reluctantly. I’d stopped expecting anything after weeks of worship. I sat with a Quaker friend and discovered the service consisted of black robed damsels writhing while somebody intoned the Lord’s Prayer and somebody else played the organ. I was defeated. I simply folded and wanted to cry. All I had seen was flesh when I thought I’d come for spirit. My Quaker buddy noted my anguish and thought me ill. I shook my head. I wasn’t ill that way. Well, would I go with him to Sunday supper at Quaker House. It only cost a quarter. I had a quarter, just exactly, and he took me.

You guessed it. In the midst of silent prayer I heard the words of Psalm 100:3: “Know that the Lord is God, He made you and you are His.”

I knew then and know now this moment represented wish fulfillment and was very psychologically explainable. I had a long way to go over more than fifty five years on two continents. But from that day, while I’ve anguished over a lot of other stuff, I haven’t doubted that ‘my times were in God’s hand.’

 -Dick Sales