At the Fort Meyers airport a woman whom I met in Atlanta two years ago spots me. At that time The Shack has sold about 350,000 copies and I was speaking in the city. She had told me her husband was an airline pilot and their marriage was on the rocks, divorce appearing imminent. Today, they are completely reconciled and heading out in May to celebrate their 11th anniversary in Greece. Big win for grace and forgiveness.
I arrive in Atlanta for an hour and half layover, connecting to Cleveland. I find out that at the Atlanta Airport last week an elderly man and his wife on their way home to Switzerland came through security, he pushing her in a wheelchair. She was asleep, wore a neck brace with her cane by her side. During the check someone asked her if she was okay, she didn’t look well. He stroked her cheek and said, “Shhhhh, she has had a hard day. She will be fine.”
The security person wasn’t convinced and after further examination and questions it was discovered that she had been dead for about six hours. Her husband had not wanted to hassle with all the protocol and cost of trying to get his dead wife home, and simply figured that this would be an easier solution. I start to think what would have happened if he had successfully gotten her on the flight…nah, I don’t think I’ll go there.
I land in Cleveland and am greeted by Will G, friends of the Gwaltneys in Penang, Malaysia (Dalat). Turns out his wife Stephanie was a little girl and her dad a professor at CBC in Saskatchewan, when I attended three years back in the 70s. Love these little ‘it’s a small world’ kisses of grace.
Sitting fairly close to Lake Erie and a bit more than an hour from Cleveland is Ashland Theological Seminary, the venue for tonight and tomorrow. I truly enjoy the academic environments and have a lot of fun with and in them. You can almost breath the rarified air of lofty thoughts and holy longings, the struggle between trying not to get too lost in Western Enlightenment rationalism and the hope that the heart will truly get fed. It believe that the wider the gap between experience and theory, the farther the leap of faith and the more likely a fall.
1,300+ folks from this 20,000-person city are coming out tonight. I was told this may well be the largest gathering ever on this campus. Makes me grin. Their other speakers have included Reagan, Bush, Netanyahu, Bill Bennett, Clarence Thomas, Kissinger, Powell and Charlton Heston. In fact, in my little campus guest apartment, pictures of them hang all over the bathroom…watching me pee. I turned Margaret Thatcher’s face to the wall. And now coming to this campus is … me? Are you laughing yet?
If this says anything, besides the obvious point of God’s sense of humor, it is that we inherently know that political discourse and effort will never fill the human soul; that even the possibility of a relationship with a God who is especially fond of us will prompt us to consider taking risks we never would otherwise.
The evening went wonderfully, the sense of Presence palpable. Lots of stories during the couple hour book signing line. I will tell you one.
Their 20-something daughter died a couple years ago, and mom was lost in her grief. About a year after, the couple decided to go for a picnic drive, taking a lunch and camera, and planning to try and take a break from the deep sense of loss that seemed to be tearing them slowly apart. They drove into the country looking for a campground or park that had picnic tables, but couldn’t find one. About to give up they spotted something that might work, what looked like a table near a small outbuilding?
They pulled over, and walked with their lunch over to what turned out to be three or four concrete steps going nowhere, just sitting in the middle of this clearing. She glances over at the little building and sees that there is a plaque on the door. It simply says, “The Shack.”
Together they eat their lunch sitting on the steps going nowhere. She feels drawn to this small building and decides to go and look in it. Her husband refuses. “What if someone is living in there?” She opens the door anyway.
In a corner of the one room is a tree stump that has been cut to function as a chair. Another corner has a shelf with a pile of slate, like stairs…going nowhere. Then there is the desk; complete with chair, a pad of paper, pens and two copies of a book that neither of them had ever heard of, The Shack. A typed note lay on the table. It simply read, “Please take whatever you want.” They took one of the books.
With her husband standing quietly just behind, while she talks she is laying down one photograph after another in front of me. The steps, the little building, the sign on the door, the inside room, the tree stump chair, the shelf, and the table with everything she had described including two copies of the book sitting on the right side.
Tears in her eyes, she hands me a worn book and says, “This is the copy I took. This is the book that saved us!”
