HE LOVED THE SUNDAY MORNING CHURCH BELLS

An agnostic lived near a church in a small town. He never darkened the doorway of any church in the twenty years that I knew him. The Left Behind series infuriated him as did morality and Christian values.

In fact, I may have been kind calling him an agnostic. He was probably more of an atheist. A Marxist. And he might have had a cataclysmic change in his young adult life because of a divorce.

His wife left him for another woman. Yet instead of turning to his conservative roots--he was once a John Birch Society member after college, he became a flaming liberal and espoused his views to whomever was within ear shot. Part of his anger was directed at religion for whatever reason.

I think he was raised in the church, but I'm hazarding a guess based on distant memory. But I'm hoping so. I'm hoping he will return to the church as others have that used to go to church with me when we were young.

He loved to hear the church bells. When he moved, he told me he missed hearing them. Maybe there's still hope, and just maybe that's a sign.