Fire

You know that thing where life punches you in the guts and leaves you doubled over, wondering what the hell just happened, and you can’t bring yourself to talk to God about it because you’re not entirely sure how much God’s related to the fact that you’re finding it hard to breathe right now, but you pick up The King Jesus Gospel by Scot McKnight hoping that it’ll remind you of the simple truths that can be known, and you realise, at the end of it, that the funny feeling in your tummy is your soul waking up for the first time in a long while?*

And then you find Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell at a church bookstall and the blurb intrigues the $2 out of you, and you take it home and read it and your freshly-awakened soul ignites as if it’d been drooling petrol while it slept, and you realise that God’s answered the prayers you never prayed and then everything in you wants to celebrate and sing praises to your Creator and shout this glorious news from the top of high hills and give everything you own to the poor and foster babies and not eat cakes and avoid Woolworths and Coles and love as hard as it’s possible to love in your little corner of the world?

You know?

Well, that.

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* Those who read this post in January will remember that this is not the first time a book by McKnight has had this effect on me.