Christmas - the earthly birth of the God of new beginnings

Christmas is nearly here. I celebrate with awe the birth of the Saviour who came to give us eternal life and a whole new beginning in our earthly lives. A second chance.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, before I became a Christian, I was searching.

Searching to find what my life was all about. Since studying Philosophy of Religion at university, I’d been an atheist and had enjoyed the peculiar (delusional) sense of freedom that accompanied that belief.

What was life about?

I arrived home after a colourful, exciting year or so in Sydney – feeling bored and empty inside. 

What was my life all about? Here I was, back home after a 'glamorous' life in Sydney writing and directing films, learning acting and doing most things I'd ever wanted. At the end of it all, despite some exciting success, I came home feeling it was all futile. 

Why hadn’t my life worked out the way I’d expected?

Why had my life been sprinkled with tragedies?

There were some obvious answers.  If I'd made more average choices in my careers, friends and boyfriends, I might have been content for a while. But there seemed to be something more involved. 

I believe different choices would only have delayed the searching process. 

Searching at Mt Tamborine

Longing to find answers, soon after arriving home I set out for a few weeks at Tamborine Mountain, one of my favourite places. Here I'd have time and quietness to think while I walked in beautiful forests. Surely I would find what I was looking for amid that peace and beauty.

                                                                                        

Photo by Arlene Dodson

Most days on the mountain I walked along damp tracks in the rain forest.  The air was deliciously cool and fresh - that special air of rainforests, with a leafy, bracken-scented tang. I swam in cool rock pools, listening to the creek gurgling over the stones.

Some mornings, I sat and watched the mist creep over the hills, engulfing trees and hedges until damp pearly clouds swirled around me. I shivered with delight. Soft white-gloved fingers of mist slid around me.

                                     Photo by Arlene Dodson

Surely this was the perfect place for inspiration and understanding to fill me. 

But they didn't. 

My life still made no sense. Most of my friends were heading overseas or getting married - or continuing in the crazy life I’d lived in Sydney, with creative experiments like film-making and drug-taking. 

I had no plans and no money.

In the late afternoons, I sat on an old seat at the edge of the mountain, gazing out to the western mountains over the hills, valleys and the vast hazy patchwork of farms. Surely here, if anywhere, inspiration would illuminate my mind. 
But it didn't. 
All I saw was the beautiful expanse of farms and the hills beyond, smudgy grey-blue in the late light.  The many dams, lit by the late sunlight, blinked back at me like shards of a shattered mirror.

                                                                                                                     Photo by Arlene Dodson

    

Finding my answer

It was time to go home. Little did I expect to find my answer awaiting me there. When I arrived home, I noticed my sister Arlene was different. We were barely on speaking terms, so I didn't ask her what had happened. But I watched her. She was much happier than the girl I'd left at home a few weeks ago.

Why?

One sizzling hot midsummer day, I was in my bedroom when I heard voices on the veranda. Arlene's voice and an unfamiliar man's voice. I was curious but too proud to go out and see who my younger sister had befriended. Surely he would not be of any interest to me?

I tried hard to resist the urge to see who it was but after a few minutes I strolled out with feigned nonchalance. While the galvanised iron roof creaked and crackled in the hot sun and cicadas shrilled in the background, a man was reading from the Bible of all books! I was puzzled.

I sat down and listened, intending to stay a minute, then go back inside. 

'All things work together for good to those who love God and those who are called according to his purposes,' (Romans 8:28) the man read clearly.

As he read that, light flooded my mind. It was true! God was real. I knew it. And I realised then and there, all the apparently random things I'd lived through - my idyllic but difficult childhood, my father's tragic death, my journey into atheism, my experiments with drugs and film-making, good relationships, broken relationships ... all those things and so many more had been allowed by God and he would use them. Perhaps he would use them to help me reach other searchers or needy people. 

But I knew, with excitement, it was true and it was the explanation to my life. God was real and he wanted me in his kingdom.

The man - we'll call him John - led me in a prayer acknowledging I wanted to become a Christian.

Many obstacles lay ahead of me as I embarked on this unexpected lifestyle but I reached the point where I acknowledged Jesus as my Lord and Saviour and enjoyed the fulfilment of being a Christian.

I had found what I consider the meaning of life.

Have any of you had major turning points of any kind in your life? What were the outstanding ones?