Where were you when you first heard about the birds and the bees? I was 11-years-old and walking across the playground of Boulder Junior Academy with Devon Hopp, the son of the administrator of Boulder Memorial Hospital.
Beginnings
“Do you know how babies are made?” Devon asked.
“No.”
“Well, it’s like this…”
“You’re kidding. No way. Really? Wow!”
The only sex education I ever received from my parents was when I got engaged. “Well, it’s better to marry than to burn,” Mom sighed.
Endings
Where were you when JFK died? JFK as in, John F. Kennedy, the president of the United States. Some of you were not born yet.
Perhaps your earliest memory of a national tragedy is the Challenger disaster. So where were you when the Challenger blew up? I was at Nameless Ranch, Texas at a pastor’s meeting of the Southwestern Union of Seventh-day Adventists.
For some of our children the first national disaster is the bombing of the World Trade Center. Where were you on 9/11/2001? I was at Thunderbird Adventist Academy in Scottsdale, Arizona, sleeping overnight at the dean’s apartment on my way taking my daughter to attend La Sierra University in Riverside, California. There were the spectacular pictures of the falling buildings on TV. Just like the Challenger horribly exploding in mid-air.
When I first heard the news about the assassination of JFK, I was standing in the doorway between our kitchen and family room, November 22, 1963. I was stunned. A few days later I watched the funeral parade with the black horse and a son saluting as his dad passed by in a casket. More deaths were coming soon. Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.
Why does the world have a history of killing its leaders?
Which brings up the killing of the Lamb of God. Where were you when you realized the real truth about Jesus? The One who authored how babies are made. The One who paid the price for all murders and deaths. Where was I?
The real truth about Jesus
I was sitting in a classroom at Loma Linda University–La Sierra Campus. Dr. Kenneth Vine’s sanctuary class ended with him explaining how people brought the sacrificial lamb, laid their hands on it, confessed their sins, and looked forward to the Messiah who would die for them. Then he wrote on the board in all capital letters–ACCEPT. They had to accept by faith, just like we do today, that their sins were forgiven and that they were saved not based on what they do but on what Jesus did on the cross. “For by grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” Eph. 2:8,9.
“You’re kidding,” I thought. No way. Really? Wow!” I floated out of the classroom and walked on air to my dorm room. I was raised in church and Sabbath school and Pathfinders. Attended church school since the second grade.Now my sophomore year in college. Why did it take so long?
I visited Pastor Venden in his office about these matters. His mantra was, “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent,” John 17:3. Pastor Venden died recently. Someone wrote in the article of the official ministerial department announcement of Pastor Venden’s death that our church is a church of the law and through the years that has led us to be unintentionally legalistic. Morris Venden was a voice that was speaking a strange new message that was too good to be true.
Where were you when you first realized the real truth about Jesus? Martin Luther was climbing up the steps on his knees in Rome when it came to him, “The just shall live by faith,” Romans 1:17b. For Ellen White it was sometime before 1888. Everything she wrote after that is filled with Jesus: Steps To Christ, Desire of Ages, Education, Christ Object Lessons, Ministry of Healing, Thoughts From the Mount of Blessings, and others.
Where were you when you first realized the real truth about Jesus? Could the first time be today? “And this is the record that God has given to us eternal life. And this life is in the Son. He that hath the son hath life. He that hath not the Son of God hath not life. These things have I written unto you that believe in the name of the Son of God that ye may know that you have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the son of God” I John 5:11-13.
