My heart skipped as I read the message: "Babe, we need to talk." I knew something was wrong. Obi never messaged me to talk. He called and we talked. It was that simple.
For three years we'd been friends, constantly having each other's back, calling every weekend to keep tabs on our lives.
Worried and bothered, I skyped him immediately. He picked at the second ring. "Hey, What's up?" I asked as my face creased in worry. "I'm fine. Better than fine in fact." His voice sounded unusually calm and I could feel the warmth of his smile from my phone 1000 miles away.
"You overdosed? Or what? " I asked, skeptically. "No, it's the book." "Book? What book?" "The intimacy book."
Heaving a sigh of relief and following it up with an accompanying hiss, I shook my head as I asked incredulously "This, this, this whole thing is about a book? You message me at 2am and get me worked up because of a book? A book, B. Really? You amaze me."
It's not just a book, Sophs. It's a map. It helped me find God.
He paused for a moment then said "In that book, amongst other things, the author mentioned that God is a person, a person that loves me. Those words got to me, badly. So, I asked him to prove He really did. I spoke to Him as I would to a person. He responded, Sophs.
He called my name! It was a beautiful experience. I wanted to be sure it really did happen, so I spoke to Him again and He responded immediately." Then he did the most unlikely thing. He wept.
As I looked at him weep something broke inside me. I hung up to allow him to have his moment, and me think. "Could God really talk to Obi?"
And yet I knew it was true. Somehow I'd felt an unexplainable and comforting presence in my room as we spoke. I mean, I'm Christian but I've never really thought of God as an actual person. And here was Obi claiming God called his name. Could that book really be the game changer?
I remember he mentioned a friend shared the first chapter from a manuscript he was working on with him after he put up on his WhatsApp status "God does not exist."
He'd read it in spite– to prove that nothing could sway his mind and deleted it afterwards, calling it trash.
Obviously it was trash enough to remain in his mind, for here he was three days later, weeping like a baby.
