Thank God for Invitations

     My spiritual journey from Reform Judaism to being a deacon in the Episcopal Church was a long one, filled with many detours and stopping-off places. Shortly after I was baptized at the age of 28, I began my quest for a church that I could call home. In some respects, I was a bit like Goldilocks, no where I went seemed to fit. I had been to the Catholic Church with a boy I dated in high school so I knew that wasn't where I belonged. I tried the Presbyterian Church, the Methodist Church, the Southern Baptist Church, the Freewill Baptist Church, even the Pentecostal Church. Not one of those churches amswered my needs but instead, left me feeling like the proverbial red-headed stepchild. While in Cincinnati one weekend, I attended a gathering of Messianic Jews. I did not belong there either. I was beginning to think there was no church for me. I felt saddened, dismayed and incredibly frustrated.
   
     Several months after my conversion, I ran into an old friend who asked how I was doing and what church I was attending. I told him of my situation and of the frustration I felt. I joked, was I literally going to be a wandering Jew forever looking for a church home? My friend invited me to attend his church, St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Paris, Kentucky. The only thing I knew about the Episcopal Church was that many of  its churches had red doors. I told my friend I would give it a try, though it was several months before I did so. The Sunday I finally decided to go to St. Peter's, it was the day of Bishop Wimberly's annual visit. As I sat alone in a pew and watched the procession with all the banners and crosses,  I felt as if I had stumbled upon a church celebrating Sim'chat Torah, a Jewish holiday in which all the torahs in the Temple are paraded around the sanctuary at the beginning of the service. The first reading I heard was from the Hebrew Testament, the second reading from the Psalms. The serrmon was one of love and compassion, of helping to make the lives of others' more livable. I thought I had perhaps found my new spiritual home. Over the next several months, the more I heard and learned about the Episcopal Church, the more sure I became that it was indeed where I needed to be.

     Looking back over that period of time, of deciding to follow where I was sure God was leading me, of taking that leap of faith, I realize that had it not been for my friend Dick's invitation to attend a service at St. Peter's, it is most probable that I would not be a deacon in the Episcopal Church or that I would even have walked in the door of an Episcopal Church. I might have given up my quest to find a spiritual home and returned to Temple, a place that was familiar and where I knew I had belonged. How many other people have found their spiritual home of faith within the walls of the Episcopal Church because someone invited them to attend? How many other people are still out there searching for something they cannot quite put their fingers on that would quell the restlessness in their hearts? How many people could we help find their spiritual home  if we but extended an invitation to join us for a Sunday service or a Healing service?
                                                                                                                                                                    Wherever you are my dear friend Dick, when I think of you I say "Thanks be to God."  Amen.