This morning our team woke up planning to do our first and only ATL (ask the Lord) in Ireland. I was excited about it the night before when we planned it, but our morning was filled with confusion and doubt. Tamica and I both had awful nightmares leaving us weak and fragile spiritually. Everyone had woken up late. Heather and I were still under the weather. We had three loads of laundry that needed to be dried, with no dryer and had to catch a plane to Romania in less than 5 hours. On top of it all, most of us were a little emotional about leaving Ireland.
Matt, Heather, and I dropped off the laundry at a place to be cleaned, praying it would done by the time we had to leave for the airport and headed down the street. Dublin is by far one of the coolest cities I’ve ever been to and we’d learned to navigate the streets around the mission pretty well in the last week. We went a couple blocks then stopped to pray. In all honesty, I wasn’t into it. I was weak and paranoid about stuff going on around us. After we prayed fr a few minutes we all listened anxiously for the Lord to lead us. I saw a hospital in my head, a corridor leading to a person’s room on life support. I asked if there was a hospital near and none of us could think of one. So without much to go on we kept walking down the street.
After walking for a few minutes, we stopped and realized we were running out of time and couldn’t really keep walking much longer. I saw a Scientology center across the street but was unsure of how to approach that. Then I saw him. Andrew was sitting on some steps on the side of the sidewalk. He looked cold and had a cup asking for change. Ever since I had read “” my heart just broke for the homeless. In my head I pictured myself going over to him, sitting down, offering him a meal and sharing the joy of my Savior. But that was just in my head. I was a wuss and turned my head. I looked around as we discussed our options. Finally Matt said “Well I don’t know if you guys noticed, but there is a man asking for change right there.” I’d seen him. I’d felt the tug to talk to him. MY feet still stayed planted.
Matt in boldness and confidence strode over to the dejected looking man, Heather followed in suit and I hesitated, but accompanied as well. They started up a conversation and within minutes we found out he was from well outside Dublin, had a sister in England, had lost both his parents, was 23, had been to Iowa 3 times, and did NOT believe in God. As soon as the words of disbelief came out of his mouth I was overcome by feelings of enormous hurt and pain. I wanted to breakdown a cry but held the tears back in fear of scaring our new friend. We talked about religion for awhile longer, Matt and Heather gently encouraging him in any way they could, inserting the hope and joy of Jesus Christ whenever possible. I added little but tried to be obedient to the Spirit when it gave me words.
Throughout it all he had just too much pain, too much hurt in his past to see the glory and new life offered by the Lord. He said his roommate was a Christian and pointed to another man asking for change right up the road named Reuben, but he kept saying that “at this time in his life” he didn’t believe in God. He could believe in a higher power but the God we believed in he just couldnt have faith in. How could our God put so many bad things in the world? How could someone like Noah live to be 900 years old? He had so many questions we tried to explain as best we could, and he really did respect our beliefs, but at the end of our conversation still refused any belief in Jesus Christ. We asked if we could prayed and he said no. I wont lie, my knees almost gave out on me in defeat, in desperation for this man we had just met. It scared me. That I could feel this much hurt for a guy we’d met about 10 minutes ago.
We thanked him for the chat, tried to bless him, and told him we’d pray for him. As we walked away I just didn’t understand. What had just happened? Did we fail? How can we help him if we’re just going to walk away? Matt and Heather stopped a few blocks away and decided to pray for Andrew. HE didn’t want us to pray with him, but that wasn’t going to keep us from interceding for him. As soon as Matt began I cracked. I couldn’t breathe. I wanted him to believe in God. I wanted him to know Jesus. I wanted him to understand how loved he was. I needed him to believe. I needed him to have something bigger and better to hope in. I wanted to pray but couldn’t. I spit out a few words that might have been a prayer but I just couldn’t understand. And I was overwhelmed with this devastation, defeat, and love for a complete stranger. But he wasn’t a stranger. He was my brother. As we walked back to the mission, preparing to leave Dublin I was filled with so much regret. I wished I’d told Andrew, flat out, how much he is loved individually by God. How much I loved him. How beautiful his green eyes were. How I wanted to see those eyes in heaven…
Regret isn’t from the Lord so it’s not something I’m going to dwell on. But the emotions I felt for Andrew after only about 20 minutes are helping motivate me here in Romania. He’s helping me with confidence and urgency with the message we’re spreading. With kingdom. I’m still processing through it, still examining where so much emotion came from so quickly, and trying to figure out what in the world I’m supposed to do with it.
