There is a story that comes from the great spiritual revival a few years ago in the former Soviet Union. In one small town, a group of Christians was working to get some Bibles to the people of the community. Well, things were going very slowly and the shipment kept getting put off. Then, one day, someone remembered that, back in the 1930’s, when Stalin had purged the town of all believers, their Bibles had been confiscated and stored in a certain warehouse. The believers, of course, had all been killed.

Well, they went to the warehouse and to the amazement of all, the Bibles were still there. The local officials gave permission to take the Bibles and distribute them to the townspeople. And while the group was doing this, one young man – a very skeptical and hostile student who had been hired to help move the Bibles – was found hiding, and weeping, in a corner of the warehouse. In his hands was clutched a tattered Bible which he admitted he had stolen. He took it, he said, to find ways to ridicule the book and bring discredit to the Christians.

But when the young man opened the book, he was confronted by a life-changing sight. Inside the front cover of the Bible he had randomly stolen from among the thousands confiscated, was the handwritten signature of its owner – his own grandmother!