“Do you renounce Satan?"
"I do.”
From the first time I heard someone speak about Jesus to the moment I stood before the altar and answered the baptismal renunciations, it took a full thirty years.
From childhood, my family life was not a happy one. My family did not have the ability to guide me in the right direction, and I felt like a person groping alone in the dark. Only after growing up did I gradually correct the course of my life. Most striking of all, whenever I needed help most, different people always stepped in to support me: friends, colleagues, and brothers and sisters in the Church. Their help felt nothing short of miraculous. I felt deeply that although God did not appear directly, He led me out of the valley step by step through these people.
Just as the Israelites left Egypt for Canaan, a journey that could have taken only a few weeks became forty years in the wilderness because their hearts were not yet ready. God never wastes time; He uses the long road to prepare us.
I come from a science background, and I once believed that reason could explain everything. But the more knowledge I gained, the more I discovered human limits. Some things humanity can never fully know. Just as a dog cannot understand bacteria and viruses and only knows that its owner takes it for an injection, are we not the same before the Almighty God?
Reverence before the unknown is the beginning of piety. As Scripture says: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and the knowledge of the Holy One is insight.” (Proverbs 9:10, NRSVUE)
Looking back on these thirty years, I am most grateful that God has never abandoned me. When I let go of my self-assured control and looked up to Him, only then did I truly experience peace and acceptance. I now know clearly: He is the Lord who governs all things.
“Do you believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth?”
“I do.”