of an eye, many people want to tell you the answers, but only God can tell you about you, and he will; because, as Christ said, ‘Old things have passed away; behold, all things are become new.’ King Solomon was speaking to an Old Testament inability to know the ways of God, but Christ closed the gap between man and God.”
The preacher announced that he would be available in the altar room for the next hour and left the stage, its backdrop returning to a three-dimensional animation of the Christian cross and John 3:16, appearing in more languages than I could recognize. The crowd started mingling and several ascenders signed off.
“First time?”
The voice belonged to a man a little younger than myself, who appeared next to me.
“You mean in this church or in a church, period?”
He extended a hand toward me. “If you’ve never been in a church before, then I’m really glad to see you! Name’s Thomas. Thomas Burdo.”
I grasped his hand. “Brandon Dauphin.”
“Well, Brandon. I’ll be happy to show you around, explore what we’re about, all that first-timer stuff.”
“So you work here, then?”
“I volunteer here as a greeter,” he replied, his voice revealing an Australian accent. “Volunteer a lot nowadays… slump hit Canberra hard and I gotta do something or I go crazy. What better way to spend free time than serving the Lord?”
“Can’t God just give you a job?”
Tom smiled. “I’m praying, of course. I pray before every interview. But I must let God answer in his own time, maybe the door he opens for me won’t be one I expect.”
“Well, I prefer to keep things more predictable if you don’t mind,” I replied, looking away toward nothing in particular.
“Mind if I ask how you found out about us?”
“Uh, a friend. She was gonna join me, actually, but had to run at the last second.”
“Well, we’re always here, always open to whoever wants to come and worship.” Tom indicated the stage, where another preacher had appeared and was preparing トラック買取 to speak. “Our staff has fifty-eight preachers who give daily or weekly sermons here in the sanctuary. We also have an altar room, specialized teaching rooms, libraries, offices, so on and so on. Day or night, we’re bustling with activity.”
I noticed more ascenders entering the sanctuary. “Heaven’s gonna be pretty crowded, then, huh?”
Tom ran his hand through his hair: dark brown with green highlights. “Trust me, if God’s the city planner, traffic jams and data-link saturation won’t be a problem.”
The new preacher, a tall Indian man appearing to be in his thirties, began to address the crowd. “Before I begin today, I’m happy to say that the new security we purchased, thanks to your generous giving, was installed yesterday. So far, so good… none of you should have even noticed the change when connecting here.” He paused and seemed to reflect on something. “But I thought I should share that, as I was preparing today’s lesson, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said that someone somewhere was going to have a problem because of it. So we’re gonna put our servers back on the old measures for a little while… you never know, maybe we’ll discover there was a bug. I just couldn’t sleep at night knowing that someone seeking salvation was turned away by software. After all, you know how computers can get sometimes?”
The congregation responded with a resounding “Amen!”
“Holy Spirit, huh?” I asked, becoming more than a little spooked.
“The Holy Trinity: God the Father, Christ the Son, and the Holy Spirit,” Tom said.
“What… Would the Holy Spirit be the uncle or something?”
“The Holy Spirit is an aspect of God, just as Christ is. I’m not enough of a theologian to understand more than that, but it’s not like any creature can truly know everything about God. We base our faith on what he reveals to us personally and in scripture.”
Chapter ten of the Book of Mark came in through my SNDL. The crowd settled again and the preacher, identified by my interface as Pastor Amit Montavon, began. “Being that Pastor Steve just preached on wisdom and knowing the ways of God, I thought this would be a good time to deliver a message on faith. With the chaos of living in today’s world and the knowledge of the world literally at our fingertips, faith is something we sometimes pit against knowledge. It’s easier than ever