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“Hi”, she said shyly. She asked me about myself and was so soft spoken and friendly, my antenna did not pick up the signals. You see, it was obvious to Mrs Livermore that I was not with the program and she was here to change all that. Have you ever left a department store with a purchase and wondered how you ever got sold? This woman was the velvet hammer, and soft spoken as she was, she was not leaving until she made a sale.

She asked if I believed in God. Negative. I told her I was an agnostic. Heck, I probably couldn’t spell the word, let alone define it. It just was something that people like me said who didn’t have a clue what they believed.

We talked a bit more. That is to say, she talked and I nodded. I noticed that while she had been talking, I had been unconsciously backing away, a few inches at a time. After telling me about God and Jesus and not getting anywhere, she finally asked THE QUESTION.  “Jim,” she said. “Do you consider yourself an open minded person?” I backed up a few more inches and felt something hard against my back. I had backed up into a redwood tree. This woman had literally and figuratively backed me up as far as I could go.

“Jim, do you consider yourself an open minded person”? There is only one answer to that question and she must have known it. If I had been in a car dealership, this is the point where the salesman takes his pen out of his shirt pocket and hands it over.

“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I do” She had me.

“Well then, ” she said. “Since you consider yourself an open minded person, why don’t you ask God if he is real to let you know.”