I suspect there have been a time or two in your life when you’ve opened the front door to find a nicely dressed young couple or perhaps a mother and her son who inquire as to the destiny of your eternal soul. You usually have only a choice of two responses: either a polite "No, thank you," or you welcome them in for a lengthy litany on the absolute correctness of their position. Dialogue is not in the offing. It is diatribe only. But such encounters can be fruitful if they leave us wondering what we think about salvation, heaven and hell, personal relationships with Jesus and the like.

My own understanding of salvation has been less of an ecstatic experience and more a delightful, albeit sometimes disturbing, adventure. As I have pondered what it means to be saved, I have discovered that it has less to do with eternal rewards and far more to do with immediate encounters. Despite the efforts of well-meaning missionaries, I have been unable to relate to the warm fuzzy feeling many equate with giving one’s life to Jesus. My life tends to be more tumultuous than that. I am often tossed and tumbled by a myriad of forces that impact my spiritual journey. Issues of inequities, millions dying of hunger or watching Yugoslavia self-destruct, prevent me from isolating myself in a shield of self-centered piety. It isn’t just me and Jesus. It must be me and Jesus and the rest of the world. Surely the life of our Savior was ample evidence of that.