Starting from the church

Whitsuntide is sometimes described as the Church's birthday.

A story to illustrate that it is not a bad starting place when looking for the way to meaning and purpose in life:

As  the Russian army advanced across Hungary in the closing weeks of World War II, a young girl looked at her home for the last time as her family prepared to join the flood of refugees pouring across Europe. After a few years of hardship in postwar Germany, an Episcopal parish on the Great Plains of America sponsored their resettlement. The girl and her family arrived as strangers to the land, the language, and the culture, but before long they made many friends in their new church home.

Even after becoming an American citizen, the woman often wondered about her friends and relatives  during those grim years behind the Iron Curtain. At long last it was safe for her to return. Almost 40 years had passed when she and her husband drove into the small Hungarian town. With only fading memories of early childhood to guide her, could she find her old house? "Stop at the church" she said. "If I start from the church, I think I can find my way home". Sure enough, starting from the church, the route she walked so often as a little girl came back to her, and she found her home.

Starting from church, from life in the community of the baptised helps us find our way in life. There we find fellowship withy others. In Christ and the Church we have a home base, a place from which to start out in life.