This is about a man, a common man, who crossed my path a hundred times though we never met and lived a century apart.  We first met in 1976 in Chicago, Illinois in a class room and his book which is a classic, has changed my life forever, which he never wrote and he has become my best literary friend and his book has united me with friends all over the world.  To touch a life through a multitude is indeed incredible but to impact or change a multitude through the life of one is indeed miraculous and that is what this plain vanilla man did who died of a ruptured appendix at the age of 43 in Cairo, Egypt because he didn’t want to take a soldier’s bunk.

He was not a Mystic but he was mysterious at times, hard to explain, difficult to understand, and a bit beyond us but worth the effort of going after.  He is like the book just beyond you but worth the mastering, you might have to read it several times to understand it but its worth it in the end.  He gnaws at me like an aching tooth needing a root canal and I keep coming for more novocain.  I spent over 500 hours last year again reading ‘My Utmost For His Highest’ and I am reading it again.  I have been reading it over and over and over since September 1976.  What is it that draws you to that little ‘Orange Devo’ like a moth to a flame?  It’s not its deep theological genre, or its profound world views or even its life changing philosophy.  What is it that Ozzie has written in his 52 books 100 years ago, that draws the human psyche like bees to honey?  I have over 7,000 volumes in my personal library but why am I drawn to this man’s shelf and what draws me to that worn, tattered copy of his devo for 36 years?  Is it just blind, raw habit, or is there something deeper, something more, something calling like a zephyr, or a still small voice, is it what my Jewish Rabbinic friends call the ‘Kavanah’ the inner man?  He is more than an author, I have thousands of those, some good and some not so good.  He is a friend, a deep friend, and some days we don’t agree and some days he makes me angry but we stay friends and I am back in his book the next day.  Like he said, “Books are the blessed chloroform of the mind.”

Maybe next time I will tell you how and where I found my plain vanilla friend and just how our paths crossed.  My first copy was bought with chicken money and will be left to my daughter Rebekah when I die.  It’s held together with Elmer’s glue and duct tape and hard to read due to so many years of reading, highlighting and note taking.                                                   “Between The Lines”