By Jim McLain 

On the Damascus Road the apostle Paul was, prior to his conversion, on a mission to find and arrest Christians which he believed was the will of God. Suddenly he was struck by an intervention from God that changed his Life forever and produced the greatest of all the Apostles. You can read this remarkable story In Acts 9:1-43. 

I have never been on the Damacus road but my wife Marilyn and 1 did have a “Damascus— like” lifechanging event that changed our lives forever and has brought us to where we are today. The following is a short synopsis of that “DECISIVE” event. 

From my earliest days I was wandering in a world I did not understand, I did not know where I came from (other than my dad and mother), I did not understand why I was here nor did I understand what the end game was other than that I would someday die. My world around me was typical with father, mother, brothers, sisters, extended family and friends and myself as dysfunctional as the world where all of my strivings were focused on myself to get whatever I wanted short of murder while at the same time not having any real direction as to what I wanted to get out of life. 

Marilyn and I were married in 1962 for 62 years until she passed from Parkinson’s in 2023. Then there were two of us and we were forced to focus on the substantial needs of life for survival in a world still dysfunctional as it is today. Suddenly our daughter was born in the first year of marriage heaping more pressure upon the pressures we had already experienced, quite unprepared for married life as we were. Now there were 3 of us with our first son being born almost 5 years later, marooned in an environment that was still dysfunctional with many hidden traps. In those years, statistics for divorce for couples who married below the age of 25 was very high in the first 7 years. Miraculously ours lasted 62 years for which we praised God. We wanted it to last even longer but Marilyn went to sleep in Jesus on Dec 19, 2023. 

My career as a power lineman was encouraged by my new brother-in-law who worked for the Southern California Edison Company in the San Bernardino California district yard. I applied and was hired as a groundman and in 4 years I had advanced to Journeyman Lineman. As it turned out the mobility of a Lineman to get a good paying job in America wherever you might move to helped us immensely as we began to move north in steps out of California!!! 

Why were we surviving life’s deep chasms while others around us were dying from all the reasons we frail humans succumb? Just what is life’s meaning? Is it: fun, self-gratification, prestige, fame, fortune? Solomon in the Bible book of Ecclesiastes plumbs the depths of human vanity and makes some very striking contrasts that bring bewilderment to the human mind when he writes in Ecclesiastes 3:1-58… 

“ There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: a time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot, a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. (NIV) 

It is a strange world that offers life and death, peace and war, promise and heart-break, love and hate; a world that I did not understand nor appreciate. Again, where did we come from, why were we here, where were we going, what awaits just behind the horizon of time? Perplexing are these issues for souls who have been cast rudderless upon the sea of life without chart or compass? How could Hope and Promise co-exist with hate and death??? 

There is a God in Heaven who knows all about these frailties and inconsistencies of the human experience!!! He is aware of all our needs, every want, every striving, and every call from hearts screaming in their own way to be free from sin’s torturing onslaught!!! 

There is ONE more thing that there is time for under the sun, IT is NOT Vanity: IT is time for the God of Heaven to intervene in the affairs of mankind!!! And intervene He did, into our upside-down world and clueless minds He graciously and gently involved Himself. Even though this backdrop was at play in our minds, by worldly standards we were doing quite well and not looking for a bolt of lightning from the heavens. I had a great job and Marilyn was a great wife and mother, two wonderful kids, a nice home and a nice car and a pickup and a few extra bucks in our account for the niceties of life. What more did we need? What more could we want. What we needed more than anything else was totally UNRECOGNIZED!!! But that was soon to change as we hit the road for Pendleton, Oregon…Stay tuned for the next episode…!!!