BLUF:
Grace rarely arrives with a flash of light. More often, it begins as a quiet irritation of truth—a small pebble of grace pressing in the soul until the heart can no longer ignore it. Our part is to speak wisely and kindly; God’s part is to awaken the heart.
When Eustace Scrubb first appeared in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, he was the boy nobody liked—spoiled, cynical, and absolutely certain he was right. He mocked his cousins’ talk of Narnia as childish fantasy, dismissed courage as foolishness, and believed the world was made for his comfort. Then he found himself on a ship bound for the edge of the world, surrounded by people whose quiet strength he could neither understand nor outwit.
Eustace didn’t change overnight. Grace almost never works that way.
First came frustration, then loneliness, then—after a dragon’s hoard and a cursed sleep—the terrible realization that he had become the very thing his heart resembled: a dragon, greedy and isolated. Only then, when his own scales became unbearable, did he finally meet Aslan. The great Lion tore away the hide Eustace could not shed himself, layer after layer, until a raw and trembling boy stood new in the water.
Lewis writes, “It would be nice, and fairly nearly true, to say that from that time forth Eustace was a different boy. To be strictly accurate, he began to be a different boy.”
That line has always lingered with me—because that’s how most of us come to faith.
Greg Koukl once said his goal in evangelism isn’t to “close the deal,” but simply to put a stone in someone’s shoe—something that bothers them in a good way, something they can’t quite shake. Most people aren’t won by argument in a single flash of light. They’re drawn by a series of nudges, conversations, kindnesses, questions—small pebbles of truth that keep pressing on the soul until the Spirit brings them to life.
The apostle Paul described it this way:
“I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth.” — 1 Corinthians 3:6
Jesus said it, too:
“One sows and another reaps... Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.” — John 4:37–38
Conversion, like growth, is slow work. The seed sprouts, the stalk rises, the head forms, and then comes the grain (Mark 4:26–29). Most of us are sowers, not harvesters. Our task is not to force belief but to speak truth gently and leave it where God can make it grow.
Sometimes it’s a question. Sometimes a verse. Sometimes an act of mercy that disarms self-righteousness. Like the bishop’s candlesticks in Les Misérables, or the dragon’s tear that falls from Eustace’s eye—each moment is a pebble in the shoe of unbelief, and God knows exactly when the stone will finally turn into a seed.
So don’t despise the small encounters. Don’t measure your faithfulness by the harvest you can see. When you walk away from a conversation feeling like nothing changed, remember: you may have just placed a stone that heaven will someday call a cornerstone.
Soli Deo Gloria
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