Billboards

     I must have been about five years old, riding down the freeway, in the back of my parents old green Rambler.  One of the things I remember the most about these road trips, were all the billboards.  I was too young at the time to read them, but I remember using all the pictures and letters to make up stories, to pass the time while we drove.  I have a distinct memory of riding down the freeway after I had been taught, in school, how to take all those ABC's that had meant nothing to me, and put sounds to them, make words, and sentences.  It seemed like all at once, I knew what all those billboards had been trying to say to me.  I felt like a whole new world was opening up, and I was very excited.  I didn't have to make up stories, I had learned how to read.  I remember it so clearly.
     For me, reading billboards isn't as exciting as it was when I was six or seven.  But I had an experience that was similar in my late twenties.  I was in the middle of a very hard time in my life, when I was touched in my heart by the Gospel.  I made a decision to serve God, by inviting Jesus into my heart, and giving my life to Him.  I was given a little red bible, I put it in our van, and I began reading a little bit every day.  I had read parts of the Bible before, but I always came away feeling confused, this time was different, I was starting to understand.
    I grew up in the Catholic Church.  I had also attended a Christian Church for a while in high school, and again in my early twenties, but I never quite believed, I just felt like it was something I was supposed to do.
     One Sunday morning my husband and I were watching a Church service on TV, by this time I had read a large part of my New Testament in my little red Bible.  But this was the first service I had seen since my early twenties.  I started to cry.  My husband, Mark, looked at me kind of funny, and asked, "Are you okay?  Why are you crying?"  I answered, "I finally understand, I've seen it all with my eyes before, but finally in my heart, I understand!"
     A whole new world was opening up to me and I was overwhelmed, I was excited!  Like those giant billboards that I passed so often when I was five, I saw them with my eyes and only pretended to understand.  It wasn't until I learned to read that I really understood what they were saying.
     After receiving Jesus into my life, the Holy Spirit started teaching me my spiritual ABC's and the things that I had seen before, but could only imagine the meaning, I was now beginning to understand,
     1 Corinthians 2: 11- 14, "For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the man's spirit within him?  In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God, except the Spirit of God.  We have not received the spirit of the world but the Spirit who is from God, that we may understand what God has freely given us.  This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, expressing Spiritual truths in Spiritual words.  The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.