Christian Owner of Faithbox, Willie Morris, Used to Be an Atheist Until Letters Moved Him
"There was a series of natural disasters that hit that were just devastating," Morris said. "And they ended up mobilizing and getting on the ground there really quick."
Morris was soon tasked with helping with blog and social media management and was asked to read a few thank you letters from families the relief organization had helped. He took home the letters and after reading them, he said, they sparked a change in his life.
"I started going through them, and it was so impactful," he said. "[It was] one of those times in my life that I'll never forget."
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Despite many of the people losing everything they had to the tornado, explained Morris, they thanked not just the relief organization but God.
"People who literally lost everything still being so thankful and so gracious and a lot of them were thanking God in their letters, [saying] 'Thank God he brought you guys to us,'" said Morris. "It just really got to me and it kind of just made me take a step back in my life and be like, 'What am I doing? I've turned my back on my faith and yet these people that have nothing have so much of it.'"
After reading the letters, which he said brought him to tears, Morris explained that he embarked on a quest to rejoin the faith.
The experience he notes on the Faithbox website "opened me up to God and Christianity, albeit a very different flavor than what I'd grown up with."
He added: "Instead of attending church, I found myself sneaking off for a few minutes of the day for peaceful reflection — sometimes on a verse, sometimes on a quote, and sometimes just on the silence. Instead of proclaiming the pros of Christianity, I chose to challenge myself a little each day to be a better person towards others. I didn't speak at all about being Christian, I didn't feel the need to talk about it. It was personal and private."
That private faith, however, became more public as Faithbox to shape last summer.
"I thought Faithbox would be a great medium to share simple ways for others to enrich their faith and make a positive impact through simple actions and reflections, and I still believe it will be. What I didn't count on was the almost immediate impact that starting the company would have on me," he noted.
"Over the last two months, I've had the pleasure of meeting so many incredible people and hearing about their struggles and faith journeys. Through hearing these different perspectives, I've been challenged to re-examine how my Christian faith fits into my own life. I've been getting out of my comfort zone a lot (this post, for instance) and I've even been looking for a regular church again — my Nana is so pumped," he said.
"I had become complacent and thought that my own faith-based practices were all that I needed. Well guess what? Complacency sucks. I'm thankful for the people who, without even knowing, have helped me overcome that. I'm Willie Morris and I'm a Christian," he ended in the post.
