Devotionals

---

This week will see the release of JK Rowling's latest novel in the Harry Potter series. I don't want to get into a discussion about the content and suitability of these books, but I am fascinated by the story of how they came to be published in the first place.

Rowling's, at the time a single mother, penned her first manuscript of Harry Potter in an Edinburgh café. When she had finished, with the help of an agent, she tried to get the novel published. All the major and many of the minor children's book publishers, eight in all, turned down Rowling's in her attempt to have the book published. Finally they turned to an obscure publisher who was only beginning to get interested in Children's books. Nigel Newton the chairman of Bloomsbury Publishing took the manuscript home but instead of reading it himself he asked his eight-year-old daughter Alice to read the first chapter.

An hour later young Alice came down from her room to demand the second chapter. She had read books before that her dad had given her to read but she knew that this story was different. She was not interested in publishing, she just wanted to read the rest of the story.

And as they say the rest is history. Rowling's has now sold over 260 million Harry Potter books. She is estimated to have a personal cash fortune of over 1 Billion US Dollars. Bloomsbury is no longer an obscure publishing house. The agent has become a multi millionaire. I hope Alice, who is now probably finishing high school ,has received her compensation for, in the end, an eight-year-old child's vision made the difference. Sometimes only a child can see.

It is not surprising that the old book encourages us to remember and rediscover child like faith. A faith that believes rather than doubts. A faith that sees what grown ups sometimes miss. A faith that wants to trust, to hope and to believe. A faith that is unmoved by what the majority think.

Sadly many think that to believe in God takes the sort of childish faith that also loves fantasy. In fact fantasy's all age popularity points to the yearning that this material world cannot satisfy .

Believing in God is not childish but it may require us to be child like.

"I tell you the truth, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of God like a little child will never enter it.""
(Luke 18:17, NIV)

---

PLEASE ENCOURAGE AUTHOR BELOW LEAVE COMMENT ON ARTICLE