Mysteries of God

José was the only son of an evangelical pastor. He grew up running in church halls, listening to his father preach and observing his mother's prayers. As a child he attended weekly Sunday school and was educated at a famous Presbyterian college. Like my father and many others, José abandoned the faith in his early youth. When I met him, he was already an adult and I did not know his personal history. For me, he was a good man, studious and a lover of history, very close to his home and his family, but he declared himself totally incredulous.

When he found out that I was studying at a seminary, José invited me to his house. He told me about his evangelical origin and the reasons why he abandoned the faith. He showed me many Christian books that he still had, and he said:

"Take what you want, since they don't mean anything to me."

Years later, when José was already an old man, I went to see him because I was surprised to hear that he visited one of our churches every week that was several blocks from his house.

—I go because there is a lot of peace there, the temple is very beautiful and I like the love with which they receive me.

- And faith? I asked him, to which he replied:

"I think I lost that a long time ago, but it does me good to go there, because it reminds me of my parents and my childhood."

Joseph continued to visit church assiduously until his health weakened. His relatives told me that after that, every day he asked them to read him a biblical passage and recited Psalm 23: The Lord is my Shepherd, I will lack nothing, in places of delicate pastures he will make me rest ... His memory, which already had erasing many stages of his life, he surprisingly remembered the entire psalm that he surely learned in his childhood. He recited it with a broken voice and always ended, happy as someone doing a feat, repeating the final words: I will dwell in the house of the Lord for long days. And he smiled ...

It is difficult for me to explain theologically if Joseph experienced in some very personal way during his late church attendance the process that we now call conversion or the return to faith that he experienced as a child in his parents' home. It encourages me to think that if the Lord forgave the thief on the cross, Joseph's renewed and senile faith, despite having lived a life estranged from God, was also legitimate.

Today I believe that in the understanding that we all have of faith and the requirements for salvation there are also mysteries beyond our understanding. I prefer to repeat with the psalmist my inability to understand the mind of the Lord and I accept that from him, and through him, and for him are all things (Romans 11:36).

God bless you!