A comment at church yesterday by an avid reader that will stay with me, quoting a friend who loved books as much as she did. The friend was, at the time, a young Mormon missionary, and was trying hard to stay close to the Spirit. To go where she could do good. To do what someone out there needed.

The friend’s favorite conversation opener was to ask, What’s your favorite book?

One time, having been taught all her life that G_d knows and cares about us personally, while trying to focus her thoughts in prayer she found herself impulsively asking G_d Himself, What’s Your favorite book?

She felt immediately silly–but also, to her astonishment, an answer.

“Anne of Green Gables.”

Wait. What? Her favorite from her childhood, but. Why would G_d care about that of all things? What? So that was the second question; she really wanted to know.

And the answer and the experience, passed on to her friend Sarah and now to the rest of us, came just as quickly and just as close to her heart:

“Because that is the first book you read that made you want to be a better person.”