My Blog

My fel­low Nudgees and I have finally hopped to you, the com­mu­nity at Leah’s blog. As I’ve got­ten to know Leah I’ve been inspired by her deep integrity and I’m think­ing we’ve landed in the per­fect place for today’s ques­tion. For the last five days we’ve been deal­ing with the tough ones asked by The Reluc­tant Prophet tril­ogy, and in true fic­tion writer fash­ion, I’ve saved the hard­est one for your group, Leah, because who bet­ter to han­dle it?

Here it is: What if a law has to be bro­ken in order for you to fol­low a Nudge from God?

We’re talk­ing here about that sub­tle whis­per or know­ing or even poke from God that says, “You need to do this, no mat­ter what it costs.” In a pre­vi­ous post along the five-stop “hop”, we dis­cussed the per­sonal sac­ri­fices that some­times have to be made. Rela­tion­ships can be bruised or even irre­triev­ably bro­ken and as Jesus says in the Gospel, we need to count the cost.

So – what if the “cost” involves a legal fine? A day in court? A night in jail? A brand spank­ing new arrest record?

In the third and last book of the tril­ogy, Too Far To Say Far Enough, Alli­son faces that ques­tion when a very young pros­ti­tute ends up at her door. Now, Alli­son already has a record after being arrested in the park in The Reluc­tant Prophet on trumped up charges that Chief is able to make dis­ap­pear. But this is on an entirely dif­fer­ent level, and it involves peo­ple she cares about.

Our young Offi­cer Kent risks his career and looks the other way to do what he thinks is morally right rather than what is depart­ment policy.

Chief takes a sim­i­lar chance by advis­ing Alli­son how to stay just this side of the law. Barely.

That lov­able, irre­press­ible social worker Liz Doyle puts her job on the line in keep­ing Alli­son to hypo­thet­i­cal ques­tions and doing research for her.

Alli­son her­self could be arrested on sev­eral dif­fer­ent charges in her attempt to save this young girl’s life.

The first ques­tion, of course, is: “Is that okay?”

We could say that Jesus broke laws – the ones he knew were either ridicu­lous or down­right harm­ful and cer­tainly ungodly. Oth­ers since have fol­lowed suit – Ghandi, Mar­tin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks. My friend Joyce Hol­ly­day, who endorsed Too Far, accu­mu­lated an impres­sive num­ber of arrests when she and other were found­ing Sojourn­ers in Wash­ing­ton, D.C.

So is it “okay?” I think Jesus would say it depends on the moti­va­tion. Are you break­ing an unjust law in order to change the way peo­ple are treated? To wake peo­ple up? To say I don’t care what hap­pens to me in the process but this can’t stay the same? I’m think­ing Jesus is right there with us.

But that begs the sec­ond ques­tion: “Can we go that extra mile?”

How many of us would be will­ing to spend a night in a cell with pros­ti­tutes the way Joyce Hol­ly­day did, over and over? How many of us would risk beat­ings and even death, as the Free­dom Rid­ers and other Civil Rights work­ers did? And how many of us would sneak out­side the let­ter of the law as Alli­son did to pro­tect a child from falling into the bow­els of the system?

Okay, so most of us won’t be called to take such dras­tic mea­sures. God obvi­ously doesn’t want all of us in jail or noth­ing would get done, y’know? But I think we are all called – nudged – to some­thing sig­nif­i­cant and it usu­ally entails pay­ing some kind of price, tak­ing some sort of risk. So what’s our bot­tom line ques­tion? What’s our lit­mus test?

In Too Far To Say Far Enough, Alli­son dis­cov­ers what I believe we all have to dis­cover, day after day after day: is it about lov­ing another mile?

Lov­ing the body of Christ.

Lov­ing those who don’t know the body of Christ.

Lov­ing those who hate the body of Christ.

Lov­ing enough to let peo­ple hate you.

If you put it like that, then, yes, I’d risk a great deal to love another mile. I may have risked los­ing some read­ers by lov­ing my way through these five ques­tions. We all cer­tainly risk ridicule when we live full-out for what we know is true. But I’m think­ing I’d like to have that on my record: “she loved the extra mile.”

Thanks for going these miles with me over the last five days. There may have been some unset­tling moments for you, but now – the reward!

Now what you have prob­a­bly been wait­ing for…winning books!  Nancy’s pub­lisher, David C. Cook is giv­ing away:

Reluc­tant Prophet series (3 books) to 10 win­ners,
PLUS 10 copies of Reluc­tant Prophet to each winner’s recip­i­ent of choice.

Nancy will per­son­ally sign each book as well as include a let­ter with Reluc­tant Prophet to your per­son of choice.  Visit here for the Raf­fle­copter entry form and offi­cial rules.

If you are join­ing the hop mid-way through and not sure where to go, here are all the stops for each day.  That way you are able to max­i­mize your entries into the give­away, as well as cap­ture Nancy’s heart as she wrote this series:

Mon­day: Nancy Rue, The Nudge “What Hank Says … About Leav­ing the Pew”
Tues­day: Mocha With Linda “Will the “Real” Chris­tians Please Stand Up?”
Wednes­day: Jen Hat­maker “When the Nudge Dri­ves a Wedge”
Thurs­day: Julie Cantrell “That Whole ‘Unequally Yoked’ Thing
Fri­day: Far From Per­fect MaMMa “Is It Worth Hav­ing a Record?”

If you would like to con­nect with Nancy, she can be found here:

Web­site: www.nancyrue.com
face­book (adult fans): www.facebook.com/nnrue
face­book (for teen fans): www.facebook.com/nnrueforteens
twit­ter: www.twitter.com/nnrue
pin­ter­est: www.pinterest.com/nnrue
In addi­tion to Nancy’s blog, The Nudge, (for her adult audi­ence), she also has a blog for teens (In Real Life) and for tweens (Tween You and Me)

About Nancy:
Nancy Rue is the author of over 100 books for adults and teens, includ­ing Heal­ing Waters, which was a 2009 Women of Faith Novel of the Year, and The Reluc­tant Prophet which received a Christy award in 2011. Nancy trav­els extensively-at times on the back of a Harley Davidson-speaking and teach­ing to groups of ‘tween girls and their moms and men­tor­ing aspir­ing Chris­t­ian authors. She lives on a lake in Ten­nessee with her Harley-ridin’ hus­band Jim and their two yel­low labs (with­out whom writ­ing would be difficult.)