How Naomi's book helped me find out where that's "It's all right" message came from.
The evening after I had asked Jesus to help me, I thought of the song and the book again. Whilst taking a shower, I realised that all this time I had only paid attention to that big yellow sun on the cover of the book. I started to wonder if Naomi's book was more than just a reminder of the song and if it could help me find out where that "It’s all right" message came from. Still in the shower, I thought of the following: I would find out which company had published the book and then do some searching online to get to know the background of the publisher. If the publisher turned out to be Christian, I knew the message came from Jesus. If the publisher had a Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or other background then that would lead me to the source of the message as well. I decided to accept whatever the outcome was going to be. In hindsight, this obviously was a nonsensical thing to do but at the time it felt like the right approach.
Keen to find the answer to my question, I quickly finished showering, went to the study room, got the book and opened it at the last page, where I read the the following: "Rigby, a registered trademark of Reed Educational and Professional Publishing Ltd". Right underneath it also said: "Origination in Singapore", which surprised me as we had made that country our new home. Having found what I was looking for, I opened Google and searched for Rigby, which indeed lead to Reed, which in turn lead to another big publishing house but nothing linked any of the publishers to a religion. I kept on searching but did not find anything. Almost giving up, I went back to where I started and once more typed in "Rigby". This time, I did not specifically look for a publishing house but instead just browsed the search results and quickly bumped into a link that said: "St John Rigby College". Curious, I typed in "St John Rigby" and the first link lead to a Wikipedia page where it said: "Saint John Rigby (ca. 1570–June 21, 1600) was an English Roman Catholic". As it turned out, John Rigby was executed in England during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I because he refused to accept the Church of England. Rigby was a devout Catholic who twice was given the chance to recant, twice refused and was subsequently executed by hanging. The Catholic Church considered him a Christian martyr and in October 1970 he was canonised by Pope Paul VI. There it was: a reference to Christianity. That meant Jesus had send us that “It’s all right” message. I did not expect that.
The moment I accepted that Jesus was the messenger, it was instantly clear what I was supposed to do: get to know Him. It felt like I was send on a mission.
Right after that, doubts popped up. Was Jesus real? Could I believe He was? Evidently, the belief on display in the account about Rigby was the kind of belief worth dying for. Could I believe like that? We had come very close to death with Naomi and I found it incredibly scary. So what made John Rigby so devout in his faith? What did he know that I was unaware of? Why was he willing to give up his life for what he believed in? What did he actually believe in? Then that sense of mission took over again, pushing my doubts out of the way, and coupled with a great sense of urgency I set out to get to know Jesus.
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