Who You Gonna Call?

They were unlikely disciples, every last one of them. And we’re unlikely candidates as well: just ordinary people, hesitant in our faith, wavering in our commitment, oftentimes difficult to live with. Yet these are the ones God calls.

“Last of all, as to one untimely born,
he appeared also to me.”
—1 Corinthians 15:8

 

An Unlikely Saint

He lived the lifestyle of the rich and famous. Born into wealth and privilege, he was a notorious party animal. He lived a life of selfish ease. Much to the dismay of his mother, an upstanding Christian, he haunted the low-life dives of the city. He kept company with disreputable characters. He had a son by his live-in girlfriend and made no move to marry her. He was, in short, an embarrassment.

One day, this entitled young man had a change of heart. Over the years he’d heard the rudiments of Christian teaching from his mother, but it had never stuck. On this particular day he found himself sitting in the garden of the family estate, a Bible in his hands. He felt troubled by the emptiness of his life.

The young man opened the Bible and read these words: “Let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and...