His feet looked twisted, locked as they were around the legs of a tall bar stool. He shifted his weight and tousled his dark hair with his fingers.
Hunching over again, he recrossed his arms and stared into the void behind a marble counter. “But how do you know?” His voice was deep and gravely with exhaustion.
It appeared he was addressing the parade of bottles against the wall. “How do you know what’s, you know, real?

When everyone claims a different truth about God and life and each of them is convinced he’s more right than the next guy, how do you keep from being completely lost?” Beside him sat a man twice his age, hair peppered and forehead deeply creased. His head remained bent as he studied the bottom of a heavy glass tumbler, hands wrapped loosely around its shape. His lips were
pressed together so tightly the corners turned toward his chin. He inhaled slowly. “I met a man once. An old wheat farmer in Kansas who had lived most of his life too far from any church building. He plowed on Sundays and read his Bible to himself in the evenings. He couldn’t tell a person what day he accepted Christ and he didn’t know a thing about dispensations or predestination or what kind of clothes a Christian should wear.
He didn’t know about denominations or music or bestseller Christian books. “For sixty years all he knew were the basics – the fundamentals, if you will. He knew Jesus loved him and Jesus saved him and he knew he loved Jesus back. He knew Jesus said to love people, so he helped his neighbors and took in strangers.

“And when a young preacher tried to tell him he hadn’t been saved right and he hadn’t been baptized right and he didn’t go to church enough, my farmer friend crossed his arms on his belly and laughed. “So I’ll tell you what I think when my head turns fuzzy and I feel lost in all the raucous.” The man’s eyes were earnest as he turned and caught the boy’s searching gaze.

“If the gospel requires more than the faith of a weathered old farmer holding his worn out Bible, loving God and loving people, it isn’t such good news
after all.”