My name is Rick Rawson. At one and the same time, I have found God and I am also on a journey to find Him. If you do not know what that means, I cannot explain it.
In 2007, I resigned from the Elder Board of my local church after completing one year of a three-year appointment. I did not leave because I had lost my faith, or because I was upset or angry at the Board’s business. I was on good terms with my fellow Board members. Some might interpret my decision as a mid-life crisis, but I have written documentation going back decades that supports my contention that what was going on in my heart had been brewing for a very long time. After 40 years in the wilderness, one day, Moses turned aside to see a burning bush. My year on the Board forced me to recognize the wilderness within. Leaving the Elder Board was a “burning bush” experience for me. Though I lacked details, I sensed that the reality of the Christian faith ran a whole lot deeper and was categorically different than what I had ever experienced. I turned aside from my historical practice of Christianity and my shallow spirituality to focus on one thing: God, Himself. That is when this journey, which is my life, percolated to the surface.
During the initial steps in my journey, I was admittedly cynical and critical of my own practices and spirituality. At the same time, I was struggling to figure out where to go. Those times have been documented elsewhere. But, there came a day when a transition occurred. It was not a stark line that I crossed, but a gradual movement from negative to positive, from looking back to asking, “Now what?”, from thinking in terms of “where have I been?” to contemplating “where am I going?”
This blog documents the movement of the Spirit of God in my life as He creates, molds, and redeems me into the person who will spend an eternity in His bosom. Posts that appear here are meant to document what God is currently doing in my life, but I have included documents written over the last several years because they represent key progressions in my thought and life, ones that deeply inform how I view my spirituality to this day.
This is not a blog about theology or philosophy, per se. Jesus did not step out of heaven, come to earth, and suffer and die just so that we could get our theology straight. He came to take us to God. Following Christ’s lead, this blog is about my pursuit of God, and the interaction of my soul with that of the Divine. When I left the Elder Board, I started a journey, one that will continue until I take my last breath. Because God is continually creating me and drawing me to Himself, nothing I write here is final: I am God’s project and He is not finished with me, yet.
You may see some of yourself in what I write. My goal is to be brutally honest and to bring to the surface issues that have plagued me for decades, give voice to them, and then describe how God is leading me through them. I hope that you will share your own struggles and concerns, as well, so that we can walk together. “Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their toil.”
