Take My Brother Mike. The book, I mean. Mr. Selby, my fifth-grade teacher, read that to us one chapter a day until the book had been covered. I don't remember if I cried then, but I have since found this out-of-print manuscript, and wept. It's about a boy whose father is gone for some reason.

Through a lot of interesting escapades, Son actually runs into Father, but not as he expects to. Dad is a tramp that is camping out on the other side of the tracks. They get talking, strike up a friendship. Remember this is written in a more innocent age than our own. Don't try this at home.

Dad has just gotten out of jail and is not sure he will be accepted by his family. He's also not sure he wants the responsibility. A series of events leads him to believe he can do it, and the last chapters are devoted to the surprise announcement that tramp "Mike" is actually the boy's dad. The boy is transformed.

That book touched deep where I needed to be touched, for I was a boy who often was without a father. Even in those days, God's comforting promise was reaching me, that if I would seek the Father, I would find Him, and the finding would have transforming power.

I'm sure the author had no spiritual intent. Nor, perhaps, did the creator of "Paladin." Remember that one? Have Gun, Will Travel? Not a place where one would expect to find the Word of God, for sure. But in those early days of TV, the nation was more openly Christian, and the Bible found its way into many plots. Like the episode where an evil man was poisoning people's water. The "right" wins out in the end. Bad guys are killed. Paladin of course lives to create the next episode, due in one week!

But at the end of that particular show, he addresses the crowd who is viewing a dying criminal, with words unthinkable in a modern Hollywood: "What does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the Lord your God?" Yes, right from the prophet. I saw it with my own eyes.

Yeah, that'll preach! And so does the narrator in Shawshank Redemption. Whether in book or movie, the author philosophizes: "Prisoners first hate the wall, then accept it, then need it." Lot of ways you can go with that one. Reminds me personally of the ways of addiction. As a child most people don't like the taste of beer or the smell of cigarettes. Because of peer pressure they learn to accept it, then they are hooked. Lust, sin, death, the Bible says. Always more succinct in the Word, but some of us need to have it spelled out a bit more.