On the way home from London last Thursday, I sat next to a Muslim mother and eight-year-old daughter. They grew up in Afghanistan, and migrated to Denmark twenty years ago. The girl chatted to her mother the entire trip—eight hours straight. She knows English, Danish, and a local dialect in Afghanistan equally fluently. I found that rather humbling.
When I arrived at customs in Chicago, I had a rather unusual conversation with the agent who looked like he was from India.
“What is your occupation?” he asked.
“I’m a preacher, teacher, and author, sir,” I said.
“How many books have you written?” he queried. When I told him, he just said, “Very interesting. What do you write about?”
I said, “All my books in one way or another are about Jesus Christ and what it means to be a Christian, sir.”
“Very, very interesting,” he said, as he put my passport into his machine.
I leaned forward, and said, as respectfully as I could, “What about you, sir? Are you a Christian?”
“Well, not really,” he said, “I’m too much of a free spirit, but I like to write, too. I wish I could write what I knew was true, though.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, “that is the joy of writing Christian truth because you know what you write can truly help people.”
“Well,” he said, “I certainly respect you for that. May God bless your books.”
“Thank you, sir. May God bless you as well.”
My Chicago-Grand Rapids plane was delayed for several hours, so I took another flight to Lansing. But then we sat on the runway for 1.5 hours while we were being refueled and waiting for paperwork. Mary picked me up in Lansing, and we finally arrived home at 1:30 a.m. on Friday.
