Life after Death

So, yesterday, we got up to the point of adolescent atheistic rebellion. Today let's grow out of that stage.

I began to realize in my 20s that there were no easy answers. That's when I decided that it was incredibly arrogant of me to claim to know whether there was or was not a god, and so I became an agnostic.

Then my dad died, suddenly, at the age of 61, and my belief in unbelief was seriously shaken. My dad and I had argued the night before he died, and he was still angry with me when I left the house that morning. I remember lying in bed the night after he died, praying for the first time in my life. I prayed that I might get to see my dad again someday, that this wasn't the end. I couldn't stand the thought that I'd never get a chance to try to make things right between us.

As time passed, I thought about this a lot. I was tempted to beat myself up about it. How selfish was it for me to suddenly decide to believe in god because I wanted something! But I moved past that thinking to a new place. It was not wish-fulfillment. Instead it was more like being forced to look at the reality of death. Was my dad really gone forever? Was that possible? Was that all life was about... living as long as the body machine keeps running and then dying and that's it?

Suddenly that just didn't make sense anymore, for no reason I can put my finger on, and I had this conviction that there was something out there that I could call divine.