Trap doors to salvation

There's a new billboard on Cheltenham Avenue in Philadelphia. Giant letters spell out "Perfect love casts out fear" (1 John4:18). I drove past and smiled and thought, "God, you're so sneaky!"

That's because I remember how my Jewish friend Jenny was converted: someone had given her a Bible, and she prayed, "Jesus, if you're real, let me know it." Later, driving to the Pocono Mountains she saw a billboard displaying a large picture of Jesus with outstretched arms and the words "Jesus is with you."

And then I remembered that an ocean and a few decades away C.S.Lewis had noticed the same thing --- how God places these salvation "trap doors" everywhere, in the unlikeliest places.

In The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, it was ambush by wardrobe during a game of hide-and-seek. In Prince Caspian it was a passenger train. In Voyage of the Dawn Treader, it was a framed picture of a ship.

I'm sure there is lots of statistical proof that billboards, door-to-door gospel presentations, TV evangelism, short-term youth group missions trips, and "the fours spiritual laws" are ineffective. But you need to see Jenny about that. I myself was sucked into a spiritual vortex thirtysomething years ago on my way to the life of a hitchhiking vagabond