Astonishing Books of Hope and Faith

As an editor, I’m always impressed at the way certain books of hope and faith stay on bestseller lists through the years.

I’m not talking about bestseller lists like The New York Times or USA Today. The titles on those lists hang around for weeks, months and sometimes years. But those books don’t last near as long as some of the ones you find on lists for religious works, such as Mere Christianity, The Five Love Languages, Through Gates of Splendor and My Utmost for His Highest.

Some of these books stay around not just for months or years, but for decades. They often begin with little fanfare or publicity, and yet something about them causes people to want to share them. The deliberate acts of publishers or authors to promote and distribute them often have very little to do with their enduring success.

This week I’ve been continuing my reading of a certain kind of longtime bestseller—inspiring personal stories of hope, courage and the deep faith which sustains that courage. Recently it was The Cross and the Switchblade by David Wilkerson; now it’s God’s Smuggler by Brother Andrew.

Once again, I’m awed not just by how this is a story of mission work, but that it’s an account of how God can work in the life of an individual. As a young Dutchman in the 1950s, Brother Andrew was swept off his feet by faith. It came upon him unexpectedly, and yet he found that the deeper he invested himself and trusted a God who had a purpose for him, the more he discovered extraordinary results.

What I’m most intrigued by, however, is that more of these kinds of books haven’t come along in the forty-plus years since they were published. Has God stopped doing extraordinary work in our lives? Is it not worth recounting it in a compelling and powerful way?

If you know of such a story, please pass it along to me. I’d love to find a way to tell it.