3:16

I have the alarm set on my cell phone to go off at 3:00 in the morning. It's the time I need to get up to shave, shower, and dress and get out of the door by 4:00 so I can be at work in Salt Lake City by 5:15 (after dropping my mother-in-law off at Beehive Clothing).

I don't mind getting up early and I've been an early riser since I was a kid...but 3:00 am is pushing it a bit. Plus, the older I get the more I think of all those naps I refused to take when I was a kid and I kick myself (figuratively because, at my age, those kinds of shenanigans can cause you to break your hip...and I've already had one of those)

Anyway, today I happened to look at my cell phone to check the time and it was 3:16. It immediately reminded my of all those signs I see festooning football end zones. Zealot born-again Christians place them there to give us all a little shot of religion while we're watching 22 guys trying to pummel the life from each other....it really is, I believe, an inappropriate venue.

To tell you the truth, for the reason I cited above, John 3:16 has never been a scripture I much liked. To be certain, it is a beautiful piece of prose:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life

It should be one of my favorite scriptures, but it isn't. Mainly because the people who spend so much energy trying to display that scripture at football games can usually be counted upon to display an equal or greater amount of energy declaring that I am not a Christian.

It's been happening since High School when a fellow member of the football team came over to my house to tell me why I was not going to be admitted to The Fellowship of Christian Athletes and why I was going to hell. I can't tell you how much I appreciated that visit. I took to calling them "Church of the Good Ol' Boy" (along with a few other names). Then a couple of them squared off with me after school. The conversation went something like this:

"Hey, Boyce, we don't appreciate what you've been saying about us...and you better knock it off"

"How about you just forgive me?"

(sadly, Church of the Good Ol' Boy's lack any sense of irony)

If I had a nickle for every time I've been told I'm not a Christian by one of the Good Ol' Boys, I'd put all the nickles in a sock and beat the next one that told me that senseless (There's that irony again)

About 15 years or ago, it got real bad in Katy. You could literally drive down the street and see every marquee in front of every Good Ol' Boy church advertising how they were going to tell you all about what was wrong with the Mormons. It was quite unpleasant for quite some time and a lot of people in our church lost friends for no good reason other than they were LDS.

None of us could figure out what the impetus was for all of this sudden vitriol and persecution directed at us. And then, one day, they announced that our church was going to build a temple in Houston.....if you listened closely enough, you could hear a collective "aHA!" erupt from all the LDS people in Katy.

It seemed that there was one church in Katy that was at the nexus of all of this. They showed weekly anti-mormon films and had regular ex-mormons visit and speak to their youth. I was, at the time, Elders Quorum President and, during one of our welfare meetings, our bishop said that he'd had enough of this foolishness. He assigned me to call the pastor of the church and volunteer to have the missionaries come over and speak to them if they were so interested in our church. (I still don't know what I did to make that bishop dislike me so much)...but I took the assignment.

I didn't get hold of the pastor. I got hold of their "Cult" minister (oh joys!). I introduced myself and told him why I was calling. We got into the standard "You're not a Christian-Yes we are-No you're not-We believe in Christ-Not the same Christ we believe in" discussion that anyone whose run into a Good Ol Boy has had.

Finally, the pastor said, "I don't want you to get the wrong impression Mister Boyce. We don't hate you. We love you....we love you because Christ says we have to love you"

For a moment I was stunned...I didn't even know why I was stunned and then it hit me, and I said.

"You're right, Pastor. I don't think we do believe in the same Jesus"

"Oh?"

"No. You see, the Christ we believe in fills us with love for our fellow man. As a matter of fact, love for our fellow man is an automatic result of the simple process of believing in Him and worshiping Him and knowing and truly understanding that we are, each every one of us, petitioners for His forgiveness and mercy...so if you love your fellow man because you feel compelled to, perhaps we don't worship the same Christ after all."

We weren't invited to speak that his church.

So that's it....that's why John 3:16 has never been one of my favorite scriptures. And then, today I happened to glance at my cell phone and it was 3:16 and the scripture came to mind. It came to me unpoluted by the noise and glare of a football game...it came to me in a still small voice. And it immediately became one of my favorites.

I think that I'll set my cell phone alarm for 3:16 from now on....at the very least, I could use the extra sleep