*name has been changed for courtesy purposes
**DISCLAIMER: I imagine that reading this will cause you to think things like "Anna seems to be lacking in common sense. she's too trusting. she should be more careful."
if this is the case…I've considered these things, and I've decided to lean towards compassion over caution. please understand, and try not to judge(me, OR Jim).
However, just in case reading this story causes anyone to think ANYTHING along the lines of “wow, Anna is neat.” Or “Anna is doing really nice things for people.” Don’t. I will vomit. And here’s why:
NUMBER ONE: Glory belongs to God, okay? ALL of it…and He doesn’t share it. He’s not supposed to. Especially not with me. Gross.
NUMBER TWO: I hesitate to tell you this for fear of judgment, but I would rather have you judging me than putting me on some sort of dumb pedestal. During this whole situation, I struggled with all sorts of awful stuff. Irritation, condemnation, wrongly judging others…even avoiding people when I just didn’t feel like helping anymore. (God, forgive me.)
Know this: as far as people go, I’m nothing special. And Jesus is amazing. THAT is the point of this story.
Continue.**
God has been putting me in the middle of some pretty crazy ministry opportunities lately…by crazy, I mean OUT OF my comfort zone. First, it was this random man at a gas station. And then….He sent Jim. Here’s the story (which is still not finished.) it started last Friday night…
I was working my night job, stocking bread at the local store. Giving the bottom shelf a cursory glance, I started to get up off of my knees when a man reached for some bread above me and dropped it on the ground. I grabbed it and went to hand it to him. Our eyes met. His were a lovely shade of blue. Then I saw the rest of him…
his blue eyes were set deep into a wrinkled, sunken face. He had a hat with a “Vietnam vets” pin on it. His clothes were dirty. He looked like he hadn’t eaten in days. A container of bologna and a package of cheese were dangling precariously from his withered hands.
“You work here?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I just do bread.”
We got to talking. He told me his name was Jim, that he lived down by the train tracks, and that he moved here from Utah after his brother died. Bits and pieces of his life surfaced and filled the space between us. He showed me his pacemaker and his phone (with one minute left on it). “I’m afraid my pacemaker’s gonna go off and I won’t be able to call anybody.”
I thought, “What am I supposed to do, God? I don’t have any money that belongs to me right now. The funds in my account are for my mission trip expenses. I can’t help this man. What will I tell my sponsors? No one will give to my trip anymore if I can’t be trusted with their money.”
A verse came to mind about straining out gnats and swallowing camels. I sighed. “Fine. But I will be replacing that money. I don’t care what I have to do.”
“Okay, Jim, let’s get you a phone card.”
As we made our way over to the check-out, he said, “I prayed that the Good Lord would send me somebody.” I replied, “Well, He listened!”
We made the purchase and reloaded his phone. “You got a phone number?” He asked.
“What am I getting myself into?” I wondered.
We exchanged phone numbers. He said he’d be calling me within an hour. I thought, “Fine. My phone is dead anyways.” We agreed to meet at the same place the next night. I finished up my bread route and went home.
to be continued…
