This is huge news: A.N. Wilson has returned to the practice of the Christian faith ^[1]. For those not familiar with Wilson, he has been a prominent English skeptic who wrote critical biographies of both Jesus and C.S. Lewis. However, he is now a practicing Christian:

For ten or 15 of my middle years, I, too, was one of the mockers. But, as time passed, I found myself going back to church, although at first only as a fellow traveller with the believers, not as one who shared the faith that Jesus had truly risen from the grave. Some time over the past five or six years – I could not tell you exactly when – I found that I had changed.

When I took part in the procession last Sunday and heard the Gospel being chanted, I assented to it with complete simplicity.

I love the fact that he can’t even say when he had “changed.” Too often we think that God only works as He did with St. Paul: with a flash of illumination which leads to immediate and total conversion. However, I think it is true that more often He works as He did with Wilson: slowly over time. Sometimes we don’t even realize that we are changing, but when we look back over a period of years, we recognize that we are no longer the same person we used to be. God will never stop working on us and will continue to pour His grace on us until we reach our earthly end. I don’t know about you, but that gives me a great deal of hope.