On returning from Eureka that Sunday, we were tired but filled with inspiration that would move us onward. It had been a long day of travel, and lots of fellowship, you would tend to think we came home exhausted. But that wouldn’t have been the case, we were only 23 years old. It was another one of those evenings where Thomas and I had lots to talk about once we were back in our tipi home. Gradually, since coming to Living Waters, we were realizing that our love, and our lives together, was not anymore just about us. We both could see, that God was pointing us in a direction that He wanted us to go.
What made the biggest impression on us that day, was listening to the letter of Philippians. We were beginning to get a glimpse of the apostle Paul’s heart, his life and his love for the new Christians. It was like walking into the light with him, towards Jesus.
He had sacrificed his career and reputation, to do one thing, to exalt Jesus. And teach the Christians how to live according to God’s plan. We realized that we needed to commit ourselves, to reading everything in the New Testament about his life, and the many letters that he had written.
Now that I have been looking back over our lives, I can see, not only how God protected us, but guided us. As the author of the Proverbs wrote in chapter 16, 9; “The heart of man plans his way, but the LORD establishes, and directs his steps.”
If you remember back in my story in Episode 10, I talked about God's invisible hand over our lives. We particularly sensed that, the day we got married at the Marin Civic Center.
If you remember where we were at, the year leading up to our arrival at Living Waters. Our lives were really messed up, we were living in a daze, of drugs, and eastern mysticism. In Episode 10, titled Trouble in Paradise, I told about how we ended up in jail because we were growing marijuana in our backyard. We were in love, but we were trying to do life, our own way. We weren’t married and we had a lot of struggles over the past three years.
Thomas and I, were from two different countries and cultures, and with different family backgrounds. Thomas grew up with the political unrest in West Berlin, his parents had lived through the horrors of the war, and had nothing to do with the Christian faith. I grew up within the comfort and safety of middle class suburbia near San Francisco. A big part of our family life, revolved around our church.
When we met in West Berlin in 1970, the main interest that we had in common was music. Gradually we fully entered into the hippie movement with the mantra; turn on, tune in and drop out. But once we finally heard the truth, that Jesus was the only way to God, that was the turning point for our whole lives.
