Searching for God

A search for God

Visits to the Democratic Republic of Congo have deepened Gill Brown's lifelong spiritual journey to find out who God is.

I cannot recall a time when I did not believe in God. My earliest memory, at the age of three, is one of seeking to know who he was.

My father was an atheist and my mother non-committal about Christianity. Church attendance was not on the agenda. Yet throughout my childhood and adolescence I sought out people who could tell me who God was. Whenever I got close to a ‘discovery’, my father quickly ‘disproved’ everything I was told — he had good bible knowledge, having assisted his grandfather, a Methodist minister!

I was baptised and confirmed — mainly to please a maiden aunt.

While training in London, I continued to look for God in ‘high’ and ‘low' churches.

Marriage to a good man who had bipolar disorder and was fiercely ‘anti religion’ was not easy. His sole concession was agreeing to a church wedding because I would not have felt married if not “in the sight of God”.

The obvious place to seek quiet and peace when times were tough was in church. Overt attendance on Sundays was out of the question however.

The nearest school to our home was a church one, so our three sons got a grounding in Christian and moral ethics.

My husband died when I was 39.

School friends took my eldest son, who had made a commitment to Jesus on a Scripture Union holiday, to a local Evangelical church. I quickly followed, mainly to find out why he was spending most of Sunday and several weekday nights in various study groups. It was there I heard the Gospel for the first time and realised the significance of what God had done for me by sending his Son.

While working full time, I became involved in children’s work on Sundays. At 60, I retired, having had two occurrences of breast cancer. I began helping in the church office once a week.

Early in 2006 I felt compelled to speak to our Associate Vicar, who had formerly worked as a CMS mission partner — most recently in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) — to ask if I could go with her on her next visit, even though Africa had never been a place to which I wanted to go! I hate the heat!

The outcome of my request was an organised CMS Praxis visit for 10 people, which I helped to lead. The CMS briefing and debriefings were invaluable.

Africa has been a spiritual journey: a deepening of faith; a learning reliance on God; an awakening of freedom in worship; a being humbled by people who walk with God and trust him in all circumstances; an acceptance of the generosity of people who have next to nothing; and a means of seeing God’s grace at work.

I’ve already returned twice for short periods — a week in October 2007 with a son and daughter-in-law who wanted to ‘give something back’, and two weeks in November 2008, when I led a group primarily interested in setting up a diocesan link. The CMS training was an enormous help in doing that.

Each time I return, my passion to serve God in the DRC becomes stronger. I was asked to stay for a longer period to help to teach English. Having had my family’s blessing and encouragement from all with whom I shared the offer, I took a step of faith. I went to the DRC for the whole of March 2008.

I give thanks to God, who has kept me healthy in retirement and given me the opportunity to serve him in a way that exceeds my hopes and expectations for my latter days. Such a God brings alive the teaching “Let the weak say I am strong" because of what the Lord has done for us.