I remember the name Lazarus flashing into my mind, and the incredible thought: This is a power that could raise the dead.
This, from a remarkable essay by Patricia Snow. Snow, mother of New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, describes her 1986 conversion, or more accurately her encounter with God. I can’t recall a more vivid, credible, sensory account of the experience of the supernatural.
Another excerpt:
I was also convinced that there must be people like me: thirty-four years old and educated, not uninterested in religion or unversed in theology, and yet absolutely without a clue, in my whole demystified life, that there was a God who did such things in the world. A God not only real but approachable, and not only approachable but forthcoming—coming to meet me, on his own initiative, in a totally gratuitous, unlooked-for way
And one last striking passage:
It amuses me, in retrospect, to think how little I deferred to him at that point. I was like a child—I was a child—in my simplicity and boldness, finally understanding what was available, and asking, with great earnestness. Like Jacob with the angel, I wrestled with God that night and as much as said to him, I will not let you go until you bless me. I will not get up, or leave this room, if I have to lie here all night, until you come to me again and show me that searing love.
Jacob, struggler with God. Children. Persistent widows. The earnest, the simple, the bold.
To such belong the Kingdom of God.
Lernings 