Sunday, Continuing One Woman's Journey From Atheism To Christ

WORDLESS WITNESS

WITHOUT MY REALIZING IT, the Holy Spirit had been preparing my heart for that as yet unimagined and unimaginable moment when I would choose Christ----and putting me in the right place at the right time. When I moved to San Diego I considered myself fortunate to have found an excellent fencing club to train at, with friendly, welcoming people who were also talented fencers.

What I didn't realize was that I'd found the place where I would encounter the Gospel. I swiftly came to respect my fencing coach as an intelligent, well-educated and thoughtful person, as a disciplined athlete and as a gifted teacher. I also saw that Josh, my coach, was a genuinely caring and gentle person---there was something different about him, something I had never seen before. Peace? It is hard to say. I am blessed with many people like that in my life now, but not then. I saw Jesus in him, before I knew who Jesus was.

After almost a year of taking lessons, I found out, almost by accident, that my coach was a Christian. I was surprised to say the least. I had a lot of negative stereotypes about Christians, and Josh didn't fit any of them, By now, I knew he was genuine; I couldn't use my typical explaining-away tricks for dismissing his faith. Nor was he alone in this. By this time I had also gotten to know his wife Heidi, an outstanding competitive fencer and coach; as I fenced and spent time with her at tournaments. I saw that while she was different from Josh in some ways---she was much more outgoing, for instance---there was the same caring, the same underlying joyfulness in her. I like these people. I enjoyed spending time with them. I wanted to be more like them.

And they were Christians!

It didn't fit what I would have expected. Here I was an atheist (which my coach figured out much more speedily than I figured out he was a Christian, yet Josh never reproached me for my unbelief, never tried to foist religious pamphlets on me or have an important conversation to tell me how to be saved. Which is not to say that he wasn't being a witness of Christ. On the contrary. All that year, Josh had preached the Gospel by living it. By being the best fencing coach I had ever had. By caring about me---not as a potential convert, but as me, a unique individual---and treating me always with respect.

----Holly Ordway, Not God's Type, A Rational Academic Finds a Radical Faith

(Please come back, as I will post a little more later today.)