“The most difficult lie I ever contended with is this: Life is a story about me.”

When I read that line, from Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller, I knew the book was written to me.

I read it shortly after I moved God moved me to Minneapolis. I was excited about what God was doing, but I didn’t really know where to start. I didn’t know what to think of it all.

Reading BLJ helped me find out that there were people out there like me. People who had a tough time matching up hypocrisy they saw in church with the love that Jesus talks about. People who didn’t want to go to a church building, but who actually wanted to be the church to each other and the people in their communities. When I found The Rock, I knew I found it.

When Rafa started asking me quesitons about my faith at work, I wanted to use Don’s words to explain to him that being a Christian wasn’t some stereotype of a balding Republican. Like Don, I didn’t want to talk about Christians; but I did want to talk about Jesus.

I had bought extra copies of the book to give out to people with spiritual questions. I thought that if people wouldn’t take a Bible, BLJ would be a good thing to give them because the spiritual truth is presented in a way that they wouldn’t quite know what they were getting until they read it already.

I gave Rafa one of those copies. He doesn’t like reading, but he read it from cover to cover. He probably started reading it because he had a crush on me, but no matter. Those spiritual truths made their way to him. One day, he asked me about a passage on page 142:

“I think if you like somebody you have to tell them. It might be embarrassing to say it, but you will never regret stepping up.” This was one of Rafa’s first hints to me that he liked me, and I knew that, but I didn’t think I liked him back so I kind of glossed over what he was saying. We laugh about it now.

People try to put Donald Miller into a box. They try to call him a post-modern Christian writer, or a member of the emerging church. He as said on his blog that he’s not sure where these labels come from, but he doesn’t apply them to himself. Here’s what he said in Blue Like Jazz about “the new face of church in America:”

“I don’t think any church has ever been relevant to culture, to the human struggle, unless it believed in Jesus and the power of His gospel. If the supposed new church believes in trendy music and cool Web pages, then it is not relevant to culture either. It is just another tool of Satan to get people to be passionate about nothing.”

When I found out that BLJ was going to be turned into a movie, I was excited – both to see how the book would be adapted for the movie and that the message would be carried to a more broad audience. But then, Donald Miller wrote on his blog that they didn’t have enough money and were going to walk away.

But then! Some fans set up a website: www.savebluelikejazz.com and people  (like me) started to donate money and raised $100,000 in just nine days.

God is big. If you loved the book, check out the website and make a contribution too. If you want to read the book, let me know. I will give you one of the three copies I have on hand right now.