What was really wrong with Peter's mother-in-law? How did it feel for a crippled man to be hauled out of bed by well-meaning friends, manhandled up to the top of a house, and dropped through a hole in the roof? What led up to their healings, and what transformations occurred because of encounters with Jesus Christ? I wanted to know about the people who appear in the Gospels just long enough to be touched by him. What were their stories? To find out, I had to write them, and the result was Visitations of Grace. Jesus himself knew that people love to hear stories, and to this day that hasn't changed. Our understanding of the Bible is enriched when we can identify with the flesh-and-blood human beings whose lives fill its pages. The stories in Visitations of Grace involve the transformations of ordinary people, such as those of the head steward at Cana, the man living with the Samaritan woman, and a Roman soldier stationed in Jerusalem.