Lord Kenneth Clark, internationally known for his television series Civilization, lived and died without faith in Jesus Christ. He admitted in his autobiography that while visiting a beautiful church he had what he believed to be an overwhelming religious experience.

“My whole being,” Clark wrote, “was irradiated by a kind of heavenly joy far more intense than anything I had known before.” But the “flood of grace,” as he described it, created a problem. If he allowed himself to be influenced by it, he knew he would have to change, his family might think he had lost his mind, and maybe that intense joy would prove to be an illusion. So he concluded, “I was too deeply embedded in the world to change course.”

What a tragedy! If only he had responded to that grace-granted glimpse of another world! If only he had allowed it to turn his attention decisively away from this world until he had become a convinced believer in Jesus Christ, and in that invisible world which is not an illusion but a glorious reality!

God can enable any and all of us to change no matter how deeply embedded we may be in this world. The miracle of the new birth can take place as we respond positively to the slightest stirring of grace in our souls.

  — Vernon C. Grounds