At the book repairer's

I took my old Bible to a wonderful lady in the next town who is a repairer of old and fine books, and who was pleased to tell me about how she got into it.

She was studying art and music at Boston University and saw an ad for an entry-level job repairing books at the Harvard library. She applied for the job and didn't hear from them, so one day she decided to call. That was the day of the selection, and it was discovered in the course of the conversation that the lady's application had been misfiled. The hiring person took a closer look at her resume, was impressed, and the lady got the job. If she had called a day later, it would not have happened.

When the bookbinder finished her tale, I said to her: "God was watching over you." She, being a gracious woman, demurred gently at my assessment. In her opinion, if she had not stumbled upon that fortuitous opportunity, there would have been another door further down the road just as sweet or sweeter.

I immediately recognized her analysis as being the same I would have expressed years ago. I could understand her objection from the inside out: How dim-witted and unscientific it once seemed to me when people praised heaven for what was evidently a coincidence. How feckless to ascribe to the special favor of God a lucky development such as happens every day of the week to atheists and scoundrels.

How had I gone from being a person who countenanced nothing of God in events to one who sees God behind every event? Had I reversed my opinion that good things happen to bad people, too? No. Had I willfully blinded myself to facts? No. Was I maintaining to the lady that the open door at Harvard was some kind of intellectual proof of the existence of God? No.

The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is that we Christians choose to acknowledge God behind the blessings of our lives. That's all. The verbal declaration I make that God got me my writing job at WORLD is a matter of obedient praise. There is much of will in the Christian life. Though we do not see, we choose to believe. We cultivate the conscious habit of ascribing wonderful developments to God, and we are not embarrassed by it. In fact this habit is the very essence of faith:

"Faith is . . . the conviction of things not seen" (Hebrews 11:1).