When is a book more than a book?

When does a book become something more than a book? When it becomes a vehicle to bring you together with God’s hurting people. Last weekend I did the first in a series of ‘meet the author’ events; this time at the Luton Christian Book Centre. I joined the wonderful John Maple and his team on Saturday with no idea of what the day would bring.

Running a Christian book shop in a largely secular country which is addicted to online shopping is not an easy option, so I didn’t have unrealistic expectations - but once again God confounded all of them.

I set myself up in the café area of the quite substantial bookstore and waited to see who would appear., and over the next couple of hours, He engineered a series of remarkable encounters.

Within minutes, ‘punters’ began to make their way into the store and was soon talking to a group about how I had come to write Sea Changed. I explained that words have been a part of my life for as long as I can remember, but that it took a cancer diagnosis to turn me into an author; how I had written this book while going through treatment for advanced cancer, initially as a legacy for my children, and how when I survived it became something bigger – a book for anyone who feels that they have been looking for God in all the wrong places or has struggled to find him in the face of adversity.

I talked about my brilliant bi-polar father and how his suffering had led me to turn my back on God, and how God wasn’t willing to let me go but spent a lifetime drawing me back to him (the story told in Sea Changed). I talked about how that life had taken me to some of the toughest places on the planet with my work with Christian humanitarian agency World Vision where, in the midst of desperate poverty, I met extraordinary faith and grace filled individuals such as Joseph Banda, a subsistence farmer in Malawi who told me that he was the happiest man on earth. And I talked about how that life was threatened by cancer, and the fact that God rescued my life from the pit and crowned me with tender mercy and compassion.

As I talked, I watched the expression of the shoppers around me and saw such a range of emotions - from pain to relief and disbelief to recognition. And so I began to listen and let their stories emerge.

One young man, who had looked particularly sceptical, told me that he had not wanted to listen to me but then I had spoken about Malawi his homeland and opened his eyes to the fact that I might have a message for him.

One lady told me how about her grandson who had been taken into hospital at the age of ten years old with a suspected massive brain tumour. While her relatives spoke the doctors, she sat in the chapel and prayed desperately. And there bargaining with God, she heard an audible voice say to her “He will be well”. She told me that was the only time in her life she had heard the voice of God and that she had run back into the ward shouting “God has told me, he will be healed.” The young man is now nineteen years old.

Another woman told me how moved she had been by the account of my father’s depression and that her brother, who had been bipolar, had also died too young. We talked about the experience of loving someone who suffers from manic depression and the challenges that caused. And we talked she cried and I found myself hugging her. I sat with her hand in mine and prayed that God would shine a light into the darkness in this family and to comfort this lady with the knowledge that however much he had suffered in the past that her brother was now whole and with the Lord.

As the day progressed I sat talking to many individuals, listening to their stories and praying for them. At one point a rather confrontational woman came and sat down before me. Her expression said it all – she felt that I was going to do a sales job on her and was ready to rebut all that I had to say.

I started to tell her my story but she kept on interrupting and asking me detailed medical questions. So what stage was my cancer? So it had metastized? I could sense her pain and eventually she told me that she had lost her mother to cancer.

She said that her mother had kept on going to her doctor but had not been taken seriously. It was months before she had a scan and then died only three weeks later. At first the daughter was understandably angry and told me, “Í wish my mum had been as lucky as you”, but we talked about how hard it was to forgive medical professionals who – also in my case – missed signs that later seemed so obvious. And we prayed together for peace and for the power to forgive those things that may seem humanly impossible to let go of.

It was an extraordinary day which passed too quickly. Before I left John asked me to sign twenty copies of Sea Changed to give to Azalea, a local charity set up to serve women working on the streets of Luton. The charity was set up with the aim of listening to, valuing and supporting these women and John though that he would also give a slightly different message of hope this Christmas.

As I look back on the blessings of this year, I am amazed yet again by how God uses all the circumstances of our lives to his purpose.

Sea Changed is available at Christian retailers throughout the UK, online and at eden.co.uk.