The Pilgrim – Part 1
Seven years old, in 1933, waking up in a strange bed, staring into the semidarkness, he thought he was in Grand Central Railroad Station in New York. He wasn’t. He was in a hospital in his hometown near the border of Wales. He’d never set foot in New York City. Turning his head he saw his mother sitting beside his bed – only it wasn’t his mother. It was a nurse in a blue uniform.
Here’s what had happened: Being chased by a schoolyard bully, fleeing, he ran across a street, was hit head-on by a truck. At the hospital a surgeon staring at his fractured skull, the hole in his forehead, picked pieces of bone out of his brain.
That’s a story J. I. Packer tells in his book Rediscovering Holiness.
The next time he woke up he felt no pain. At all. Didn’t feel sick. But back then, the doctor couldn’t tell him if his brain was damaged. They sent him home with an aluminum plate to strap across his head to cover the hole. Wearing the plate everyday was awkward, other boys mocked him.
The son of a railroad clerk, growing up in a lower middle-class English family during the Great Depression he didn’t have the money to go to college. Needing a scholarship he entered a competition, won; at Oxford he started out studying classics; after listening to C.S. Lewis lectures, reading about Puritans, moved on to theology. He graduated. Was ordained. Taught theology.
Watching his church roll downhill in the modern era, faith waning, he dug in his heels, joining arms with evangelical pastor John Stott landed in controversies. Long-winded, saying the word Chris-ti-an in three syllables, an awkward speaker but a profound thinker he started writing books. His book Knowing God flew off bookshelves, selling over a million copies.
Rising before dawn each morning, sitting in front of an old-fashioned manual typewriter, writing Rediscovering Holiness he touched one cord over and over: Sin was more powerful than he was. He couldn’t escape it. Or overcome it. Only God had the power to do that. To give him blessings he didn’t deserve. Humble, powerless, in Rediscovering Holiness he told the story of his Christian pilgrimage.
In 2020, blind, with macular degeneration, no longer able to read or write, landing in another hospital, with his wife sitting beside his bed, his pilgrimage ended on his 66th wedding anniversary.
(To be continued: The Pilgrim – Part 2)
*******
Telling stories, in his memoir Carter Wrenn follows The Trail of the Serpent twisting and turning through politics from Reagan to Trump. Order his book from Amazon.
The Pilgrim – Part 1
Seven years old, in 1933, waking up in a strange bed, staring into the semidarkness, he thought he was in Grand Central Railroad Station in New York. He wasn’t. He was in a hospital in his hometown near the border of Wales. He’d never set foot in New York City. Turning his head he saw his mother sitting beside his bed – only it wasn’t his mother. It was a nurse in a blue uniform.
Here’s what had happened: Being chased by a schoolyard bully, fleeing, he ran across a street, was hit head-on by a truck. At the hospital a surgeon staring at his fractured skull, the hole in his forehead, picked pieces of bone out of his brain.
That’s a story J. I. Packer tells in his book Rediscovering Holiness.
The next time he woke up he felt no pain. At all. Didn’t feel sick. But back then, the doctor couldn’t tell him if his brain was damaged. They sent him home with an aluminum plate to strap across his head to cover the hole. Wearing the plate everyday was awkward, other boys mocked him.
The son of a railroad clerk, growing up in a lower middle-class English family during the Great Depression he didn’t have the money to go to college. Needing a scholarship he entered a competition, won; at Oxford he started out studying classics; after listening to C.S. Lewis lectures, reading about Puritans, moved on to theology. He graduated. Was ordained. Taught theology.
Watching his church roll downhill in the modern era, faith waning, he dug in his heels, joining arms with evangelical pastor John Stott landed in controversies. Long-winded, saying the word Chris-ti-an in three syllables, an awkward speaker but a profound thinker he started writing books. His book Knowing God flew off bookshelves, selling over a million copies.
Rising before dawn each morning, sitting in front of an old-fashioned manual typewriter, writing Rediscovering Holiness he touched one cord over and over: Sin was more powerful than he was. He couldn’t escape it. Or overcome it. Only God had the power to do that. To give him blessings he didn’t deserve. Humble, powerless, in Rediscovering Holiness he told the story of his Christian pilgrimage.
In 2020, blind, with macular degeneration, no longer able to read or write, landing in another hospital, with his wife sitting beside his bed, his pilgrimage ended on his 66th wedding anniversary.
(To be continued: The Pilgrim – Part 2)
*******
Telling stories, in his memoir Carter Wrenn follows The Trail of the Serpent twisting and turning through politics from Reagan to Trump. Order his book from Amazon.