Roy H. Schoeman's Own Conversion (I)

It was early one morning in early June, during a midweek break I had given myself two or three days on Cape Cod before the crowds arrived. I was walking in the dunes between Provincetown and Truro, alone with the singing birds before the world woke up, when I, for lack of better words, "fell into heaven". That is, I found myself most consciously and tangibly in the presence of God. I saw everything that I would be pleased about and everything I would regret. I also knew, from one instant to the next, that the meaning and purpose of my life was to love and serve my Lord and God; I saw how His Love enveloped and sustained me every moment of my existence; I saw how everything I did had a moral content, for good or for ill, and which mattered far more than I would ever know; I saw how everything that had ever happened in my life was the most perfect thing that could be arranged for my own good by an all-good, all-loving God, especially those things which caused me the most suffering at the time; I saw that my two greatest regrets at the moment of death would be all the time and energy I had wasted worrying about not being loved, when every moment of my existence I was held in the sea of God's unimaginably great love, and every hour I had wasted not doing anything of value in the eyes of God. The answer to any question I mentally posed was instantly presented to me; in fact, I could not hold a question in my mind without already being shown the answer, with one, all-important exception - the name of this God who was revealing Himself to me as the meaning and purpose of my life. I did not think of Him as the God of the Old Testament whom I held in my imagination from my childhood. I prayed to know His name, to know what religion to follow to serve and worship Him properly. I remember praying, "Let me know your name - I don't mind if you are Buddha, and I have to become a Buddhist; I don't mind if you are Apollo, and I have to become a Roman pagan; I don't mind if you are Krishna, and I have to become a Hindu; as long as you are not Christ and I have to become a Christian!" [...] As a result, although this God Who revealed Himself to me on the beach had heard my prayer to know His name, He also heard, and respected, my refusal to know it, too, and so gave no answer at the time to the question.