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Saved In a Supply Closet. I’m So Sure.

Saved In a Supply Closet. I’m So Sure.

Last updated on: April 5, 2007 at 4:49 am by John Shore

Saved In a Supply Closet. I’m So Sure. 2007-04-05T04:49:22-08:00 John Shore

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My Most Dramatic Spiritual Conversion happened to me when I was 38 years old—and inside, as I’ve said, a supply closet at my job. (You can read about the exact moment of that experience here, in a post of mine called, “The Happiest Ending EVER.”)

A supply closet! At my job!

Man. Talk about strange and mysterious ways. I wondered then — like, right after it happened — and I wonder now: Is that how God usually does things? When you get converted, aren’t you supposed to be, like, up on a mountaintop, or maybe in church, fervently praying for intervention and salvation? Or maybe down in the gritty gutter, strung out on Something Terrible, so broken that it finally dawns on you that only the source of all power can (and wants to!) make you whole and happy again?

Isn’t that how it’s supposed to go? You’re not supposed to be in a supply closet at your job, are you, when all of a sudden you get slammed down onto your knees with the breaking “This Just In!” news that, far from being the awful, insidious, sophomoric joke you’d always believed it to be, Christianity is based on something that actually and truly happened?

Doesn’t that just seem like such a … random sort of intervention?

Not that it was entirely random, of course. I’d be the last to deny that in some key ways that I’ll be forever embarrassed to remember I had prepared myself to be at the receiving end of some exceptionally surprising, exceptionally forceful help. For sure.

Who I was then pretty much boils down to two words: Major Loser.

Who I am now, however, boils down to four: Major Loser — But Saved!

Whew.

Close call!

Still. What if I’d been, like, driving when God decided to suddenly Clue Me In? What then? I’d be all folded up inside my munched Ford Focus, going, “Ow, ow. I’m in such pain. Whoa, so that’s what the jaws of life look like. I’d always thought they were pretty much gargantuan hedge clippers. Well, listen, take your time, guys. No worries. As it happens, I’m actually ready to die! Whoo-hoo!”

But—praise God—that’s not what happened.

Actually, it was kind of cool, because when I did suddenly crash down onto my knees, they landed, instead of on cement, on a soft rubber floor covering being stored in that closet.

That God of ours.

Does he think of everything, or what?

Tomorrow: Neck Origami, Glowing Innards, and Pushing Around a Squeaky Little Cart.

If you’d like to know what happened after my conversion, see, “How My Unbelieving Wife Took The News of My Suddenly Becoming a Christian.”

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