Day Twenty-Two: County Westmeath
Friday 22 May
The annual VOX magazine Finding Faith Tour looks very different this year. Instead of a 7-day road trip around the island, this year VOX editor Ruth Garvey-Williams brings you highlights from all 32 counties (one per day plus one for each of the 31 days in May). Contact Ruth if you have a story to share.
Day Twenty-Two: God’s Taxi Driver
“I suppose in a way, Jesus was after me all my life,” says Sean Casey from Mullingar in Westmeath. On this year’s Finding Faith Tour, I spent an amazing hour over FaceTime listening to Sean’s dramatic story. Here is just a taste for the blog but we look forward to bringing you more in the Finding Faith edition of VOX magazine.
Sean recalls, “The rebel in me started coming out in secondary school. In those times they didn’t teach you, they bate everything into you. I had a big problem with Irish and Latin and I asked ‘What’s the point?’ So I got thrown out of school at 15.”
Eventually getting work in Manchester, Sean says the drink really took over, “It was drink, work, drink work for 30 years. I was what you’d call a drunkard.”
But in 1992, Sean visited his sister Elizabeth Booth in Newbridge (“I was well jarred!"). She and her husband PJ had become Christians a short time before and Liz asked, “Sean, do you mind if I get someone to pray with you?”
“I knew that prayer couldn’t do any harm, so I said, ‘Okay’. She arranged for two people to visit and that morning I went down to the off license to get my ‘fuel’. Stephen took one look at me and knew he would be wasting his time sharing all the scriptures he had prepared so he asked, ‘Sean do you believe in God?’
“I said, ‘I do’ - I couldn’t go with that evolution thing. So I sat down in a chair in Liz’s kitchen and suddenly the craving for drink went out the window. I knew that it was God. He was the only one who could ever stop me from drinking.”
Sean knew something dramatic had happened. He asked Liz for a Bible and began praying and connecting with God. Knowing that he would need it, Liz and PJ arranged for him to go to a rehab centre in Northern Ireland.
“God really got a hold of me. Everyday, it was like being hit between my eyes with the stuff God was showing me.”
After six months, Sean returned to Mullingar where he found local Christians who supported him. One offered him a job as a taxi driver. “That was my mission field for 20 years. I didn’t have to go to China or Russia - I would meet all these people and talk about Jesus!
“He is the centrepiece of everything. I can do nothing without Him. I know He is with me all the time, waking or sleeping. As soon as I get off this chair me and Him is walking out that door together!”
Read more of Sean’s amazing story in this summer's special edition of VOX magazine.
