The man with a cardboard box handed me the small New Testament. It was in front of the University of Idaho library. I didn't know it, but he was with an organization called the Gideon's.
That little book wound up in a drawer in my apartment.
Later, on a night when I’d been drinking and was feeling melancholy, I thought about that little book, the New Testament with the Psalms and Proverbs.
I got it out and laid down on my bed. I remember opening it and noticing a leathery smell. I’d never read it. I thought, “okay, so what are you all about?”
I started at the beginning at Matthew, Chapter 1. The "King James" version I read began with a list of archaic names. “What is this?” I thought.
Somehow I kept going. I read three chapters. Then I went to sleep.
The next night I read three more chapters.
And the next.
What I read about Jesus amazed me. The things he did. Once an angry crowd took him to a cliff to throw him down and “going his way, he walked through the midst of them.” How did he do that?
I began to experience a phenomenon when I read that little book. As I lay there thinking about the words, I would feel a peace, inside my chest.
It was curious that reading made me feel that way.
Over time my life changed and my path was formed through reading that little book. - Mike
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