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Friday, Week Eleven

Barbara Brown Taylor tells of the time she spent on a seminary admissions committee. They turned a student down, a student who obviously had few academic qualifications for theological study. However, he wrote them from his jail cell to tell them that the parole board would let him out if they let him in. They invited him to plead his case before them. Barbara described how this big guy came in and told them that, as a young teenager, he had held up a convenience store. All he remembered was brandishing an unloaded gun at the clerk, an off-duty policeman spotted him, and shots rang out. Then, before the oak table of the seminary admissions committee, he pulls up his shirt to show them where the policeman's bullet got him in the gut and went out the other side. “That was my Damascus Road, my burning bush!” he exclaimed. Of course, said Barbara, we didn't want to admit him into seminary. But what could we do? We knew Acts 9! If God could make an apostle out of Saul the murderer, what might God do with a guy with a gun? It was just the sort of thing that a God who would raise Jesus from the dead might do.

Blessings,

Michael Piazza
President, Hope for Peace & Justice

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