In the beginning God ....

These words not only begin The Holy Bible, but proclaim that God was all that existed in the beginning – before He created everything that exists out of nothing. As a kid, I marveled at the Creator's Creation each morning during winter, spring, summer and fall as I delivered The Virginian Pilot newspaper, from the age of 12 to 18. I decided to attend the University of Virginia, which Thomas Jefferson designed, because he acknowledged the Creator when he wrote into the American Declaration of Independence these words:  We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. At that time in my life journey, I did not know that Jefferson was a Deist, who believed the Creator designed everything and set it in motion to run on its own, without any personal intervention from Him thereafter in the lives of human beings whom He created. Indeed, I did not know the difference between this Theistic worldview of a personal Creator and Jefferson's Deistic worldview of an impersonal Creator. I had not been taught this as a young Roman Catholic, and thus entered U.Va. without having caught a personal relationship with the very personal God of love and grace described in the Bible. Like many university students, I began to question what I had been taught until I decided to leave the teachings and rituals of the Catholic Church. If I had caught what I was taught, and developed a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior in my life, I would not have abandoned Him like I did back then when I left the Catholic Church. These reflections are discussed more fully in my Spiritual Memoir.