The Bookman's House

To say that selling books door-to-door was out of Jonah’s comfort zone is the biggest understatement since Jim Lovell said, “Houston. We have a problem.” What Jonah didn’t know when he and Fred shook hands was that this adventure would turn out to be more than just a summer job. He understood it was going to be hard, and he understood it was going to be challenging, but he did not know that it was to provide a setting which revealed a desperate need in Jonah’s heart. Two thousand years ago, a jailer across the ocean had a similar need. This jailer held two apostles of Jesus, Paul and Silas, in the Roman colony of Philippi. Their feet were chained. But God’s Word cannot be chained. The two of them were praying and singing hymns in their jail cell. A violent earthquake shook the prison and the prison doors flew open. All the chains became loose. Paul and Silas were free. In fact, all the prisoners in the jail were now free. The jailer was trembling. Losing all his prisoners meant disaster for him. He was in great need. He felt helpless. He needed deliverance, both from outer fears, and inner fears. In less dramatic fashion, Jonah found himself in a similar desperate situation that summer. He was in great need. He felt helpless. He needed deliverance. He needed his chains loosed. This need didn’t surface until day one. From the minute Jonah was dropped off at 7:45 am, at a random Grand Rapids, Michigan intersection, close to one of the hundreds of neighborhoods before him, he experienced extreme loneliness, a feeling he had no way of understanding at the time. There was no bed to go to. Or even a desk. Or even a quiet area where he could hammer nails. He was in the middle of a big city, yet he never felt so alone in his life. “Why is everyone staring at me?” wondered Jonah. All the excitement, all the cockiness, all the goal-setting, all the positivity, and all the comradery that he had felt at sales school recently flew away like a raven. It was just him out there. And oddly enough, he felt like the enemy. From any rational point of view, he was simply trying to make money selling kid’s books. He was a college kid trying to pay for school. Big deal. But none of that rational stuff mattered. All that mattered was Jonah’s perspective. He was scared to death. He had barely slept the night before and only poked at his breakfast. He had packed two sandwiches for his lunch that day, which he wouldn’t even touch. His roommate would not pick him up until 9:30 pm, at the same Exxon gas station where he now stood. He thought of asking the gas station guy if they were hiring. Jonah was in the open air, but he felt like the city was closing in on him. The humidity never felt thicker. And everyone appeared to be staring at him. “What am I? A predator?” He was waiting for the town to stone him. He fixed his eyes on that first house he would knock on. It was one of those row homes, the ones with the small fence in between the two. He didn’t see any lights on. “Action cures fear Jonah, action cures fear.” Jonah repeated this over and over. The idea of knocking on this one door was overwhelming to Jonah. How was he going to do this for thirteen hours? And this overwhelming weight multiplied with Jonah’s fear of failure. The pressure he had put on himself to succeed was enormous. “Talk is cheap,” he often heard his father say. Nothing truer could be said at the moment. The time for talk was over.