almost four years

I've just started reading Lauren Winner's "Girl meets God". For those who don't know, the book documents her conversion experience from an orthodox Jew to a born-again Christian. In the first chapter, she describes how weird it is for her to talk about her conversion, because it's something that's difficult to pinpoint. So...what do you say when someone asks you about how you came to know Christ? It was a tough question for her to answer, and it's a tough question for me too.

I wish it was simple. And if I wanted to take the easy way out, I can give the "sunday school" answer and tell you about the time I was 9 and I filled out that little booklet and prayed with my mom for Jesus to enter my heart. But alas, life is a bit messier than that, isn't it?

Maybe instead of one pivotal moment where you accept Christ and the lightbulb turns on in your heart, it's actual a sequence...moments of grace instead of one big conversion experience. Which brings me to Camden.

Camden has to be one of those "grace moments" for me. It was a very real experience of Jesus in all the dark places - the slums, the drug-infested gang-filled streets, the broken homes...places of violence and abandonment and despair.

It was the first time I truly understood Jesus as Saviour to the poor, Redeemer of the broken, Hope for the nations. I saw Him through the eyes of the children we played with, the UP volunteers and staff we served with, and in my own heart as I struggled with what my role is as a Christian in a broken world.

I heard God asking: "For whom are you living for? And how are you consecrating your life for me?". Camden was where God pierced me with that question...and was the spark to much of my subsequent spiritual growth, especially when it came to knowing what it means to relate to a just God.