Where to now, St. Peter?

How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?

I often draw analogies between life and other things. A football game, where I’m in the 4th quarter. The seasons, where I’m in late Fall. Milton Bradley’s “Game of Life,” where I’ve stopped, gotten married, had a few kids, bought a house, stock, and now I’m coming to the fork in the road that leads to Millionaire Acres or the Poor Farm.

None are very comforting. None get me stoked.

When I was young, the thought of being an old dude was so remote, I gave it little thought. It was like starting out on a 40-year trip to Saturn, ehhh I’ll worry about it then. But like those horizontal escalators in the airport where you’re pulling your luggage at normal walking speed but zooming past people not on the escalator… here I am.

Being in my 60s changes my perception of things. I tend to worry about health issues. In my thirties, I’d reference the Reader’s Digest medical books about some disease I thought I had. I’d sigh with relief when I read that “it does not typically manifest until after sixty.” Aaah, then. Gulp, now.

But the temporal things… the things of the Game of Life…now pale in comparison to the eternal question: what’s gonna happen when I die?

I was raised Lutheran: we believe that baptism and faith alone…faith that Jesus is my risen savior… is all that’s needed. All my days I’ve had these two things, have lived my life accordingly, have felt assured.

But what if I have it wrong?

There are so many branches of Christianity that it boggles my mind. Perhaps it started with my youngest converting to Catholicism. I’ve been to a few masses and the incense and the sprinkling of holy water and the intercession of the saints and Mother Mary.., that seems comforting. But salvation by faith AND works leaves me wondering if I’ve done enough good deeds in my life to make the cut. Or are deeds not really the thing, as Luther originally said? Faith alone. Sola fides.

I’ve been to mega-churches where the sermons are topical and hard hitting. But with the electric guitars and lack of a formal liturgical service… I dunno.

I’ve tried Calvinist churches like the Presbyterians, who espouse the doctrine of predestination…to put it in the words of one of their leading theologians (who I like and have listened to on the radio for 30 years)… before you were born, before you did anything right or wrong, God had already decided if you were to be saved or not. I dunno, I have a hard time with that.

There’s this issue of baptism: infant or adult? Sprinkle or immersion?

Communion: is it a remembrance? The actual body and blood of Jesus? Or some sort of mystical mixture?

Forgiveness: through confession to a priest, who grants absolution? Or through prayer and repentance, as a child of God?

These issues were not even a thought in my youth. My main concerns then were loving my wife, saving for a house, advancing in my career. But thanks to the airport escalator, here I am, in the blink on an eye, in my 60s, Kids grown, career done, in the 4th quarter, pondering my next step.

I thought I was set in my thirties. Now in my sixties, I’m filled with doubt and indecision. Do I go right? Left? Or continue on in the faith of my childhood?

Never saw this coming. Wonder if I’m alone in my journey.

Think it’s time for a little earnest one-on-one with my heavenly Father. In the cacophony of noise from the world, let me hear that still, small voice.