I was brought up in a Christian family in the north of Scotland and attended the Free Church at that time. Sunday was the Lord’s Day in our community and we all went to chuch morning and evening and Sunday school was held in the afternoon, at 3pm.
At the age of 18 I left home to take up a job in Edinburgh and with this drifted away from the church for a number of years until getting married and setting up home in Bonnyrigg. With our family coming along I felt the desire to start going to church again, but as the nearest Free Church was in Edinburgh I went along to the local Church of Scotland. Although having started going back to church, it was not on a regular basis and remained like this for about 20 years.
In 1976 I moved through to West Lothian, having got a job in Grangemouth, and eventually came to live in Bo’ness in 1990. I was still only going to church on a semi-regular basis and in 1992 tragedy hit our family when our oldest daughter was killed in a road accident.
That night Albert Bogle knocked on our door at about 10:00pm and little did we know that was the second incident on that day that was going to change our lives for ever.
Our grief was inconsolable and Albert invited us to read John 14-16. At that point I was so distant from the church that I could not even lay my hands on a Bible in the house, and Albert left me his one. I spent the next few hours reading these chapters and in the middle of that night I felt a great burden being lifted from my shoulders and immediately realised Who was responsible. During that difficult week before my daughter’s funeral, I finally came to a faith that had not been with me before and it was the beginning of a journey that I wish I had started many years previously. As scripture tells us, out of the darkness came a great light and now this journey becomes more amazing as each year goes by. Little did I imagine when I came to Bo’ness in 1990 that the Lord would also take me to Israel, Peru, and India in His Name and am still excited by what may be still to come. God has been good to us, blessed us, comforted and strengthened us, and we trust Him in everything we do.
Mike
I spent much of my life as a sporadic churchgoer, fairly regular around my teens (Christan Brethren) and around getting married and having our first child. Sort of a habit until tragedy struck us, also in 1992 when our second son was stillborn. We were attending St Ninians- Craigmailen in Linlithgow where we lived but wanted our baby buried in Paisley with my parents. Our minister in Linlithgow was contacted as a courtesy but said he wanted to take part and happily travelled to Paisley.
This renewed our faith, and led us to becoming extremely active in our local chrch when we moved to Gloucester a few years later.
Sadly, we are not so involved and I am desperately searching for a way back, but without a tragedy to make it so.