No Matter How Wrong Things Seem to Be All is Right With God and His World

Bill Wilson, held by many to be “the most influential person in the development of Alcoholics Anonymous,” had gone on a three-day binge and was hospitalized. Ebby Thatcher, a friend who’d had a “religious experience” and was sober visited him in the hospital. At Wilson’s request Thatcher repeated to him the formula which had led to his conversion. “Realize you’re licked, admit it, and get willing to turn your life over to the care of God.”

Wilson fell into a deep depression after his friend left. He describes the crisis point in that depression. “I still gagged badly on the notion of a Power greater than myself, but finally, just

for the moment, the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, ‘If there is a God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything; anything!’

Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. I was caught up into an ecstasy which there are no words to describe. It seemed to me, in the mind’s eye, that I was on a mountain and that a wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I lay on a bed, but now for a time I was in another world, a new world of consciousness. All about me and through me there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to myself, ‘So this is the God of the preachers!’ A great peace stole over me and I thought, ‘No matter how wrong things seem to be, they are all right. Things are all right with God and His world.’”

Wilson never took another drink!

From Tim Stafford, The Hidden Gospel of the 12 Steps, Christianity Today: July 22, 1991.