This passage makes it clear just how much younger Lila is than John. Though readers could guess that Lila was significantly younger because she has a young son, it’s now clear that at 41, Lila is about 35 years younger than John. But in this passage, John’s focus is on the wonder of preaching to Lila for the first time. If his daughter Rebecca could come to church from heaven, she’d presumably know everything he was preaching about already. Lila, too, seemed like an outsider: even though she wasn’t a churchgoer, she seemed to have wisdom that John didn’t, and it made him self-conscious.