By Adam Van Der Stoep

Read in 6 minutes

Published October 14, 2024

MORE FAITH THAN MONEY: THE TALE OF A COSMIC COWBOY

I thought I had snuck into my office early enough that morning so that no one would notice. But, to my great surprise, I heard the inevitable knock at the door. I had been caught!

I casually yelled across the room, “Come in!” as I always do, and was greeted by one of our church organists. She told me that she had been practicing her music in the sanctuary when a visitor stopped in asked to speak with the Pastor. And sure enough, right behind her was our guest, a man named Paul: he was down on his luck and needed some help getting back home to Montana.

Paul was an older fella with a little hitch in his giddy-up. He couldn’t have been taller than 5’ 7”. He was sporting a brown leather jacket and matching ball cap. His blue jeans and worn in boots told me he wasn’t a weekend cowboy. 

I asked Paul if he would like to sit down and talk, and he obliged.

Immediately he began sharing what had brought him to our church that morning… all the way from the beginning of his life course! 

All his life, he explained, he had been a bit of a nomad. He and his two brothers had grown up in rural Montana. Sons of a gentle woman and an angry, drunken, bitter old man. Paul joined the military when he was old enough to do so. Service in the armed forces it was the cheapest and fastest way to get out of town. 

When his days as a marine was finished he decided came back to Montana and start over. Eventually he and his brothers reconnected and the three of them took on the vagabond lifestyle. They went wherever the work was and wherever the work would take them.

A bus driving job in Ohio. A construction job in Kansas. Here and there and everywhere in between.

Recently, he went on to explain, the three of them had been traveling for work in Missouri when tragedy struck. His two brothers were killed in a car crash. One had passed away at the scene of the accident and the other nearly a week later in the hospital. Paul was flat broke after spending what little money he had on lodging so he could be close to his brother in the ICU. 

His goal now was to drive back to Montana and start over again. His only plan was to go and live with a family friend since his folks had passed away some time ago. He was alone in the world just looking for some help to make the journey.

To be sure, I wasn’t ready trust Paul. I wasn’t even sure that his real name. I had been duped in the past by people feeding me one-liners and sob-story testimonies. So I kept my guard up. I told him that following our conversation I would contact our Deacons and see how they might be able help. But then Paul did something that surprised me. He started to share the story of his Christian faith and how he became a follower of Jesus.

Was this a manipulation tactic of his? How many times had he told this story to other pastors early on Sunday mornings? Was he trying to convince me to believe his stories by talking sharing Christian things? I couldn’t tell at first. But slowly, as he began to share his faith, his joy seemed genuine and real to me: his story was raw and powerful.

He drew me into the world of his testimony, the hour he first believed. He shared that before he had connected with his brothers, he found a job working on a ranch in Montana. You know, the kind of ranch that leads guided hunts for wild game animals in the fall. People from across the world would journey way up into the mountains and hunt the property for goats and rams.

In the off season, when hunting permits expired and everyone went home, Paul stayed behind all by himself. He would tend to the horses. He would maintain the buildings and keep up move snow removal on the rooftops. After all, winters worst could bring four feet of snow in a single clip.

One day, Paul explained, while he was out and about doing chores, he suddenly felt an intense conviction about the reality of God. He felt unclean and unholy. And, for no apparent reason to him, he spoke words he claimed that were not his own: ‘Lord, forgive me.’”

Paul was shaken to the core. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. All his life he had been non-religious. The owner of the ranch was a devout Mormon and had left some literature about the Mormon faith stashed in the cabin. So he began to read.

But as Paul began to read about Jesus through the lens of the Mormon faith, he hungered for more information. He decided that on his next trip into town he would buy as many books as he could get his hands on about the person of Jesus. And because he only went into town once every 4 weeks or so, he had to wait.

But over time, and with each trip into town, Paul began acquiring more and more books about Jesus, including copies of the Christian Bible. And for Paul, the Christian scriptures, more than any other writings, explained exactly what he experienced that day while doing chores. This was Paul’s journey into the Christian faith and the view of the world that made sense to him.

And at the end of the conversation Paul looked at me, with tears in his eyes, and said, “I just want to spend the rest of my life living by faith."



Questions For Reflection: How do you see the world?

• What is faith?
• Do you think it takes faith to believe that God does not exist? Why or why not?
• Do you believe there is some kind of intelligent force within the universe?
• What might make someone believe that the universe is guided or influenced by a higher power?
• What evidence do you believe points towards (or away from) the possibility that God exists?