An Early Encounter with God

It was Fall of 1974. I was in first grade. My family decided to say “yes” to a move from Finchville, KY to Wilton, Connecticut. It was there I would spend the rest of my childhood. Looking back I see it was a decision that changed everything…my school, my friends, my worldview, my church experience, the very culture and community that shaped who I was to become. 

We entered our new town in the pique of oranges, golds and fiery red foliage that characterize a New England autumn. As the moving van carefully crept up the winding Scribner Hill Rd, our little family of four followed behind. I looked and looked with awe out the car window, taking in the beauty of the flaming hardwoods that formed a tunnel of color and the enormous glacial rock formations defining the road’s edge.I felt small and yet held by the Creator of it all.  

In the coming days I would sense the same Presence as close as my breath as I stood nervously at the school bus stop exhaling steam into the cold air. After school, I walked down the lane towards home smelling the rich decay of fallen leaves and shuffling my feet while crunch-crunch-crunching through the carpet of color on the front lawn. The surrounding woods became a sanctuary where I encountered both the intimacy and the mystery of the Divine. The riding trails, rope swing, gurgling stream and still deep pond were altars marking a place where God was near. 

I may not have had the words for it at the time, but I knew God then and there. And I connected that this was the same God who was in the prayers and hymns and smiling faces of Sunday School teachers at church.

Marking a memory of an early experience of the Divine is one of the ways we make meaning of our past journey, wake up to God’s presence with us today and trust God’s faithfulness for the future. 

What is one of your earliest memories of God? Join us in our new Faith Like a Child book group discussion in the coming weeks as we explore more about how our childhood ways of being with God can sustain us even now.

With Wonder and Anticipation,

Cynthia