A Bridge to God: A Little Book with Big Insights

By The Rev. Peter K. Stimpson

Your journey in life poses many challenging questions. Does God exist? Is Jesus Christ the Son of God? What is the purpose of your life? Why does God allow suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? Is there life after death? This book provides answers to these and other questions, helping you travel from doubt to faith, enriching your life with meaning and happiness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9781644164808

Book preview

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A Bridge to God

A Little Book with Big Insights

The Rev. Peter K. Stimpson

ISBN 978-1-64416-479-2 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-64416-480-8 (digital)

Copyright © 2018 by The Rev. Peter K. Stimpson

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.

832 Park Avenue

Meadville, PA 16335

www.christianfaithpublishing.com

Printed in the United States of America

Table of Contents

Preface: Why Did I Write This Book?

1

Does God Exist?

2

Is Jesus Christ the Son of God?

3

Does God Really Love You?

4

What Is the Purpose of Your Life?

5

Why Does God Allow Suffering?

6

Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

7

Is There Life After Death?

8

How Do You Deal with Depression and Self-Doubt?

Final Thoughts

References

About The Author

To my wife, Lauren, whose love and support I treasure.

Preface: Why Did I Write This Book?

Why Did I Write This Book?

My name is Peter Stimpson. I am a priest and therapist, and I have written this book as a gift from me to you. It holds my reflections on the major questions that we all ask. Does God exist? Is Jesus Christ the Son of God? What is the purpose of life? Why does God allow suffering? Why do bad things happen to good people? Is there life after death?

I have spent my life exploring these issues, and have revealed what I have learned when preaching at various churches in the states of New York, New Jersey, and Virginia. Knowing that is a fairly limited audience, and knowing that everyone wants answers to these questions, I decided to write this book.

Let me tell you a story. While my ministry was largely as a Director of counseling services, I also offered my help to poor churches in need of a priest. From 1983–1988, I was helping All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Round Lake, New York, just a half-hour’s drive north of Albany. The bishop sent me there to close the church, as there were only six to ten attending services, and the building was in desperate need of major repairs. I was not much on closing churches, so I convinced the bishop to let me try and save it. The parishioners and I worked hard, and over the five years I was there, we got the numbers up to sixty on Sundays, renovated the church, built a hall, and put enough in the bank to hire a half-time priest to take my place.

During those years, I met a man who was a chemist. His wife came to church, but he was a professed atheist. He was a mountain climber, and understandably found his meaning from the beauty and majesty of nature. He and I liked each other, and we had many a long conversation about God and the meaning of life. Gradually, he began to come to church, and our talks continued and deepened.

Then one day, he told me that he had developed cancer, probably due to his exposure to chemicals over his career. He was diagnosed in May and died a few months later at the end of the summer. I loved him, and so his death was a hard loss for me, as well as for his family. After his death, his wife went through his things, one of which was his wallet. Stuffed inside was an old piece of paper that was folded over many times so as to fit. It was a poem about a climber, and one that touched me so deeply that I have used it ever since at funerals. It was noted as being anonymous, but many years later, I discovered it was written by Will Allen Dromgoole in 1900. Here it is.

We Will Never Again Pass this Way

An old man going a lone highway,

Came at the evening, cold and gray,

To a chasm, vast and deep and wide,

Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim,

The sullen stream has no fears for him,

But he turned when safe on the other side,

And built a bridge to span the tide.

Old Man, said a fellow pilgrim near,

"You are wasting your time with building here;

You never again will pass this way,

Your journey will end with the closing day.

You have crossed the chasm, deep and wide,

Why build you this bridge at evening tide?"

The Builder lifted his old gray head;

Good Friend, in the way I’ve come, he said,

"There followed after me today

A Youth whose feet must pass this way,

This stream that has been as naught to me,

To the fair-haired Youth might a pitfall be.

He, too, must cross in the twilight dim,

Good Friend, I am building the bridge for him."

This book is my bridge that I built for you. It is not meant to be a theological tome, but rather the reflections of a priest on life. Read it in that light, and if it helps you in your life’s journey, then I am happy.

I do not taut myself as some quintessential guru, sitting atop a mountain handing out pearls of wisdom, but instead a man whose has had to face life like anyone else. I have had to wrestle with pain, suffering, and doubt, and have journeyed through philosophy, theology, and psychology to find answers that would carry me over the chasm of doubt to peace and meaning. Now, fellow sojourner, let me give you my bridge.

1

Does God Exist?

Why the Search?

When I was fourteen, my father died. He had been sick with cancer for three years, his illness taking him from a robust man of two hundred twenty-five pounds down to a skeleton of eighty-nine pounds.

When my brother came into the living room to tell me that Dad had died, I went next door to the Catholic Church to pray. I went to church daily, and I wanted to try to make sense of the senseless. But I left more confused than I entered, and my faith, which was understandably weak and immature, wavered under the weight of the death of my father.

I began to wonder how there could be a God who would allow such suffering and death. I would not say that I became an atheist, but I probably was an agnostic. And yet, I knew that answering the question of whether God existed was of the greatest importance. If he did, then I wanted to spend my life in his service. If he did