The stranger at the bookshop

Last Sunday after service at DUMC (which was very refreshing, by the way), me, my brother and his friend Nick dropped by SS2's Salvation bookstore. The guys wanted to pick up a few CDs, and I wanted to check out the prices of those small leather-bound bibles cos the one I have is in the Living Bible Translation, which is a little too contemporary for my liking. You get things like Saul calling out "Hello there," to Samuel and it causes many a giggle whenever I'm asked to read bible passages aloud in bible studies, I'm serious! Haha. Anyway, I saw one I liked but it costs RM69.90 I think - and I wasn't quite ready to part with that amount of money at that time. Which makes me feel guilty cos many times I don't think twice about spending that same amount of money on, say, a pair of jeans I like. Or, in terms of the pound sterling, a nice meal at Chelsea Bun. Lol. Priorities, priorities! *sigh*

But how I have, yet again, digressed! Hahaha. I wanted to tell you about this lady I met while we were both browsing through the Popular Authors section, right at the back of the bookstore. I noticed she was glancing at me every now and then but I thought nothing of it. After a few moments, she said to me, smiling, if you're looking for a book, that one is good, pointing at Phillip Yancey's What So Amazing About Grace. She said she saw me looking at The Jesus I Knew, also by the same author, and so she thought I might be interested in the book. And I told her, no, I hadn't read any of Phillip Yancey's books, although I'd heard of them a lot. For courtesy's sake, I picked up the book she recommended, and she went on to tell me, she isn't a Christian but she likes reading these books. Now THAT caught me by surprise. And so we chatted for a bit... she told me she was attending some sort of Christian exploration course at a church in Jalan Gasing, and that she had done a rather detailed study of the book of Mark (wah, put many of us Christians to shame leh!). I was heart-warmed and at the same time a bit tongue-tied by her openness in telling me these things - I mean, I'm just a random stranger at a bookstore, after all. She even asked me to recommend a book to her (knowing that I'm a Christian myself) and I quite sheepishly told her that I'd never read any of the books on that shelf before.... oops. Anyway, she picked up The Jesus I Knew in the end. But my point is, *happy sigh* it's truly great and encouraging to know that there are people out there who are so close to coming to know Christ in a personal way. I bet more people are open to the gospel than we think. The harvest is ripe indeed. What are we doing about it? What am I doing about it?

p/s= Oh, I forgot to ask her for her name. So I could pray for her. *sigh*
p/p/s (added as an afterthought)= 'The Stranger at the Bookshop'??? What kind of corny title is that?? Sounds like a title of a Nicholas Sparks book or something....