The Story of Michael Oher.

I heard of this book when I first started working at Google, after a co-worker mentioned it to me. I meant to take some time to read it, but never got around to it. And then, at Response 2007, Pastor Park based a major portion of one of his messages on the protagonist, Michael Oher.

Pastor Park read an excerpt of the book where after Michael, a poor, black, uneducated teenager was adopted by a rich, white Christian family and beginning to adapt to his life there.

When they stopped in at the Taco Bell just around the corner, Michael would order more food than he wanted. The next morning Sean (the father) would open the refrigerator and find the coagulated, extra Mexican pizza. "He was in the habit of guaranteeing himself an extra meal," said Sean. "I had to explain that he didn't need to do that. That he could get it whenever he wanted it. He said, 'Really?' I said, 'Michael, I own the restaurant. You can go over there any time you want and eat for free.'" But the habit was hard to break.

Pastor Park also mentioned this incident, where Michael's adopted mother bought him a new backpack. Lewis wrote:

When she saw how many books he'd need, she realized he was going to need an industrial-strength backpack to carry them in. North Face, she thought, mught do the trick and so she went out and bought him a North Face backpack. Michael had taken one look at it and said, "I don't want to take that to school."
"Why not?" she'd asked.
"That's the one that all the little rich kids carry," he said.
"Michael," she said. "You are a little rich kid."
And he'd takent he backpack to school

The retreat speaker told us that alot of Chrsitians are still stuck in Michael Oher's shoes. We forget that we've been adopted into God's household. We're no longer poor yet we act like it out of habit. Needless to say, this story spoke to me profoundly...

[Excerpts from The Blind Side by Michael Lewis]