“Same Kind of Different as Me” by Ron Hall and Denver Moore

Some books sneak up on you, taking you by complete surprise. When I began reading “Same Kind of Different as Me,” I wasn’t particularly drawn to the title, book jacket design, or summary blurb. And in the first few chapters I was even (at first) turned off by the every-other-chapter tag-team narrative between the two authors. But a fourth of the way into it, I was hooked. It was fascinating to read both perspectives on the same circumstances and events shared by these two men, who came at them from such different backgrounds. Ron Hall (a wealthy fine art dealer) and Denver Moore (an uneducated homeless man) were brought together, against all odds and even their own desires, by God’s grace and grand design into something truly special. This true story is more than a call to social action and a testimony of spiritual awakening. It teaches deep lessons of pain and forgiveness, disappointment and grace, prejudice and love without resorting to preachy self-righteous platitudes. Simply by telling what God did in their ordinary and imperfect lives, Hall and Moore expand our capacity and desire to put our hearts “out there,” and into the lives of others. We spend so much time trying to create fences and borders and walls and distance with those we don’t know or understand–we think to protect ourselves–only to discover that we’ve isolated ourselves from the very people God intends to use to transform us in marvelous ways. Read this book. You will not feel called to action so much as drawn to love, beyond your natural comfort zone and into the amazing possibilities of grace.

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