The Congregation

The Congregation, has a story that is easily related to one's own life. All the different characters within the story live quite different lives and have very different emotions, but from over time in my life, even though so far I have only lived a short life I can quite easily feel their joys and pains with empathy and understand, because I have been there or been close to there. More than any other person in the book that I could relate to was Gwen with her want for a family and a husband, minus the fact that I have not grown up with many boyfriends and not been known as a “looker.”
There has been a time in my life that I was guilty of a sin and the public of my church found out and I was asked not to leave, but to not be as active, because I was a distraction to those that were serious about worship when my heart was breaking. My own pastor told me that it was probably a better idea that I found a new church, and he did not offer to help me find one, he just wanted to make sure that it was not his own. This is a pain deep in the heart similar to that of which the Tom and Jill Smith's family and Bill Senior, Nancy, and Bill Bright Junior felt from a church that turned them away.
This story is one that quite easily brings home the reality of a church. Once you have started to put time forth to read it, you cannot put it down until you understand who He is... He is always there.