Rick’s quest
Discovering a personal relationship with God
Waking up early
His baptismal name was Frederick, but his friends called him Rick. He was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom. It was not yet five in the morning, but he couldn’t get back to sleep. Since turning forty, he’d been waking up this early, as if his soul was shaking him awake from a deep slumber.
The church services of his youth were now just a distant memory. Every Sunday, he dutifully attended the Reformed church, sang psalms by heart, and listened to sermons that simply washed over him without truly sinking in. It was a duty, a tradition—just like the coffee and drinks after the service and his fixed spot on the third pew from the front. But that morning, while the city was still sleeping, Rick felt a deep longing in his heart. A feeling he couldn’t quite put a name to.
The first step
It all started with Marten, an old college friend. After years of losing touch, they bumped into each other by chance at the supermarket. Marten looked different; calmer, as if he knew a secret that Rick was missing out on. “You should come by sometime,” Marten said as he loaded his groceries into his car. “We have a Bible study on Tuesday nights. Maybe it’s for you.” Rick laughed a bit sheepishly. “Oh man, I left that stuff far behind.” “I know,” Marten nodded. “Me too. But this is different. Really different.”
For two weeks, Rick walked around with the note on which Marten had scrawled the address. He’d unfold it, fold it back up, and stuff it into various jacket pockets. Until that one Tuesday when his wife, Loes, was at her mother’s. He thought of the note in his pocket, with that address. It led to a living room full of people he didn’t know: young families, older couples, a few single people. They were sitting in a circle, with Bibles open and some with notebooks. The atmosphere was warm and relaxed—not a hint of the stiffness he remembered from his youth. “We’re reading from John tonight,” said the hostess, a middle-aged woman with a mischievous twinkle in her eye. “Chapter three, verse sixteen. Does everyone know that one?” Rick knew it, of course, but when they read it aloud—”For God so loved the world”—it was as if he was hearing it for the very first time. The words broke through to something that had been buried deep inside him.
The transition
Months went by. Rick never missed another Tuesday night. At first, Loes looked at him with suspicion—”You’re not going down the pious religious route, are you?”—but she also saw how he was changing. He became calmer, friendlier, and less annoyed by small things.
One Sunday, for the first time in years, Rick stepped into a church again. Not the Reformed church of his youth, but a Dutch Reformed church that some of the people from the Bible study attended. It felt strange and familiar at the same time. The pastor was a friendly man his own age, without a robe, who spoke as if he were talking to friends. About God’s boundless love and forgiveness that goes deeper than human understanding. Rick felt a lump in his throat. After the service, he walked outside and stood on the church square for a long time. It was a bit stormy with the autumn wind, but he barely noticed, so lost in thought was he. Somewhere in his heart, he experienced something that had been gone for a long time: a kind of hope, warm and alive.
The conflict
Not everything went smoothly. Over time, Rick started asking questions that not everyone appreciated. About baptism by immersion instead of sprinkling. About the gifts of the Spirit that some believed were no longer for this age. About different interpretations of the same Bible verses. “You’re making things too complicated for yourself,” Loes said one evening when he had been puzzling over theological issues again. “You used to just go to church, and that was it.”
But for Rick, there was no turning back. He had tasted something bigger than habits and traditions. At the same time, he noticed that his questions were causing tension in the congregation. Some people gave him the side-eye, as if he was disturbing the peace. The break eventually came unexpectedly. During a congregational meeting, there was a heated debate about whether women should be allowed to lead the service. Rick hadn’t been too concerned with it; it seemed like a side issue. But the way some people were judging each other, the raised voices, and the stubbornness on both sides reminded him of the political arguments he despised.
“Is this what Jesus meant?” he asked aloud during the meeting. “This division?” The silence that followed was painful.
New paths
Rick withdrew. Not from the congregation—he couldn’t do that to his new friends—but from the controversies. He started looking for his own path and read books by writers he had never known before: mystics from the Middle Ages, modern theologians who asked new questions of old answers. On Sunday mornings, he loved to walk through the woods behind their house. There, among the beeches and oaks, he found a peace that he hadn’t found in any church building. God was there too, he noticed. Maybe even more so than between four walls full of people who thought they knew it all better.
Loes sometimes joined him on those walks. She didn’t say much, but he could tell by her expression that she understood what was going on with him. One morning in October, when the leaves were turning golden yellow again and the first frost was turning the grass silver, she took his hand. “You’ve changed,” she said. “Not in a bad way, but you’ve become… softer.” Rick nodded. He knew what she meant. The rough edges were gone. Not smoothed out by people, but by something he still couldn’t quite name. Grace, perhaps. Or maybe just time putting everything in its place.
The peace
Now, five years later, Rick still went to the Bible study on Tuesday nights. No longer as a seeker, but as someone who had found what he was looking for, without being able to say exactly what that was. He had learned that faith isn’t so much about having the right answers, but about asking the right questions.
Sometimes new people would come to the Bible study. Seekers, doubters, people who had left churches where they didn’t feel at home. Rick saw himself reflected in their eyes—that mix of hope and skepticism, of longing and fear. Then he would tell them about his own journey. Not as someone who had everything figured out, but as a fellow traveler. About the disappointments and the breakthroughs, about the questions that remained and the answers that disappeared. “It’s not about the right answers,” he would say. “It’s about freedom, without religious coercion or mandatory paths and rules.”
And in the silence that followed, Rick sometimes felt that warm feeling in his heart again. As if God was smiling at people’s endless attempts to understand Him, and was happy that they kept trying. The journey was far from over. Maybe it had only just begun.
@wimvanputten