The Librarian Who Waited Forty Years

In 1983, Margaret Chen began volunteering at the Oak Park Public Library in Chicago, shelving books in the children's section every Tuesday and Thursday. She had no children of her own, but she believed — with a quiet, stubborn certainty — that God had called her to be there. "Someday," she told her pastor, "I'll know why." For four decades, Margaret read stories to toddlers, helped teenagers with research papers, and watched entire generations grow up between those shelves.…