The Great Knock

“Iron makes iron sharp, and one friend makes another friend sharp.” — from Proverbs 27

As Jack grew older, he went to other schools. Somewhere between the ages of twelve and fourteen, he quietly stopped believing in God. Part of the reason was that praying had become a worry to him. He thought a prayer did not count unless he felt exactly the right feelings, and he lay awake night after night, trying again and again. When he gave up believing, it felt like putting down a heavy load. He did not tell anyone.

When he was fifteen, Jack visited Arthur Greeves, who lived across the road and was ill in bed. On the bed lay a book of old stories from the north, about gods and heroes. Jack loved those stories too! The two became friends at once, and they wrote letters to each other for nearly fifty years.

That same year, Jack was sent to live with a teacher called Mr Kirkpatrick, in a village in Surrey. The family called him the Great Knock. On the walk from the station, Jack said the countryside was wilder than he had expected. Mr Kirkpatrick stopped and asked him what he meant by wild! Every sentence Jack said had to be thought through carefully. Jack loved it. He learned to think clearly and to read Greek, Latin, French and Italian.

Mr Kirkpatrick did not believe in God, and Jack did not either. But one day in 1916, waiting for a train, Jack bought a book called Phantastes, by a Scottish writer named George MacDonald. It was a story about a young man in a dreamlike fairy land. Jack did not know that MacDonald was a Christian. But the story touched his heart with a new kind of goodness. Years later, Jack called MacDonald his master.

Jack was not looking for God at all. But God was already at work, through a sharp teacher, a good friend and a story bought at a station. God can use all kinds of people and books to help us, even before we know it.

Dear God, thank you for my teachers and my friends. Please use good books and good people to bring me closer to you. Amen.