One evening, my wife and I returned home and listened to our usual list of messages on the answering machine. Nancy was one of them, “Do you guys know a book I can recommend a teenager who is asking a lot of questions?”

I was hanging my jacket in the hallway closet. I turned around and in a semi-dramatic posture, bent on frustration, I said, “That’s it. I’m writing a book for students!”

I lay in bed an hour later staring into the dark, remembering my student years. I remembered wrestling with questions and the long agonizing nights I stayed awake wondering if God was there. And if He was, why He seemed so disconnected from me. I remembered my fear of death. I remembered the strange looks from my friends whom I left back at the crossroads of an easier, less thoughtful, and less meaningful life. I remembered a deep compelling, the kind that drew Moses closer to a bush that didn’t burn.

Then my mind was made. I would begin to write a book.