A Bible at the bothy

Since February, Andrea told us, the Lord had given her particular verses for Ralph. She asked him for coffee, and he said, “I'm going up to the bothy on the moors; why don't you come to me?” The bothy is a stone dwelling with no electricity and no running water. Andrea went, read him the Acts from the version called The Message, and left the Bible with him. “Thank you for the Message. I have started with the Acts,” he wrote. And at Easter: “I recommended it to my friend, who really likes it.”

On two mornings that week we sat at Ralph's kitchen table. He asked every question he could think of, and played the sceptic against his own answers. “I wouldn't be interested,” he said, “unless I could see that it was having that effect on you.”

I see myself as a mangy little dog circling a fire, but I'm not ready to come into the circle.

On the Wednesday Chidera read him Revelation 3:20: Behold, I stand at the door and knock. “If I was fully convinced by what you're saying,” Ralph said, “I would be opening that door.” Then he brought out the Bible from the bothy and read aloud John 3:16.

We asked him to come to the church at Andrea's the next day. He would not. “I see myself as a mangy little dog circling a fire, but I'm not ready to come into the circle.” That, we told him, is exactly the type of people Jesus walks with.