Doug Wilson is a very good author. I’ve been enjoying the online, chapter-a-Monday installments of his latest novel Evangellyfish. Well, “enjoy” doesn’t really capture the range of emotions triggered, not all of them comfortable. Anyway, we’re at the end of the story and one of the minor characters who has been going to church “gets it.” I love the way Doug described it:

The fact that Brian Lewis had been attending Grace Reformed intermittently was evidence that he was caught up in what might be called a slow-build spiritual crisis. Not like St. Paul, who by most accounts was blown off his horse all at once, Brian had always been thoughtful and deliberate about spiritual things, and he had been assembling the pieces for a number of years. He had been very diligent in his own way, but he was like a guy putting together a jigsaw puzzle of a lighthouse, but one where things got mixed up in the closet, and the picture on the box lid was that of a sailing boat. He was diligent, but was making slow progress.

After the wedding, he continued to attend church, only more regularly than before . . . it got  to the point where he was attending virtually every Sunday. Then one Sunday something just snapped, and he saw that it was supposed to be a lighthouse, not a sailing boat for pity’s sake. [Pastor] John Mitchell had gotten to the text about bringing every thought to the “obedience of Christ,” and Brian felt like he had been watching a blurry out-of-focus movie for an hour and a half, and then someone had adjusted the focus for him with fifteen minutes left in the film. Everything made sense. Absolutely everything, even the first part of the movie, which he would have to watch over again in his head. Brian talked to John after the service, told him what had happened during the sermon, and asked about baptism.

That was kind of what it was like for me. Not a lightening bolt from heaven moment, but a “oh, this is what it was all about” awareness over about a week or so. All the stuff I knew from before but didn’t see how it mattered, mattered.The picture puzzle I’d been only poking at for years turned into something beautiful and compelling. I love that we can put words to that experience that even begin to capture what it was like. Thank you Doug!