Joe drove me home after the bar closed. When we arrived in the village where I lived all the houses were dark, except one where we saw a light in the kitchen window. We had imbibed enough alcohol that pounding on the back door of that house at one in the morning seemed a perfectly sensible thing to do. When Wilma opened the door, we were greeted with the aroma of fresh baking. She invited us in, offered us each a fresh bun and jam. Her husband was still up, and we visited a while, then got up to leave. I don’t remember what we had been talking about, but at the door I turned around and announced “One day I will be a Mennonite and wear a beard.”

I had been reading about people in the middle ages whose faith in God was so important that they suffered persecution and even death rather than abandon that faith. They were called Mennonites. I hadn’t realized it until that moment, but when those words came out of my mouth I realized that I longed to have faith like that, faith that was more important than anything else. How it happened that I connected that with letting hair grow on my face is a mystery, but that conviction has remained. I thought I had given up on God and Christianity, evidently God hadn’t given up on me.

And the times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandeth all men every where to repent. Acts 17:10