Do you listen to StoryCorps on NPR? I catch it every Friday morning during my early run, and it never fails to grab me by the heartstrings and pull. This conversation between a daughter and her intellectually disabled mother even put the seasoned NPR morning host in tears.
A friend posted on Facebook a link to this article from Christianity Today: "My Train-Wreck Conversion." At the risk of (yikes!) stirring up controversy, I was so touched by this woman's searing honesty about the unpalatability of most of mainstream Christian culture to a "leftist" professor and about the deep cost of falling in love with a Savior. Even more, the love and respect shown to her by Pastor Ken and his wife moved me deeply.
"Conversion was a train wreck. I did not want to lose everything that I loved. But the voice of God sang a sanguine love song in the rubble of my world."
Our Book Detectives (Kids' Book Club) just read and discussed The Year of Miss Agnes. It's a book about the power that one person has to inspire a lifelong love of learning. I love the way Miss Agnes tenderly invades the world of these rural Alaskan children and lights a fire in them about Robin Hood and maps and opera and going to college. Short, spare, sweet, with a surprise ending.
That's all for now!
That's all for now!
I read that article, and it reminded me of why I often felt (and said) that if I had been born in the US it was unlikely that I would have become a Christian. She was blessed to have found herself in the prescence of such humble people to meet her where she was.
ReplyDeleteAs was I, here.