During a night of bar girl ministry, I was teamed up with a Thai woman who could not speak English. To make things a little more complicated, the bar she chose to visit only had one girl who could semi speak English, however, through some sheets of papers with questions and a couple of translation books I was able to communicate somewhat with a couple of the bar girls. Goal accomplished!
But that night was a little different. As I began to talk to the girls, I mostly had to use questions since that was what I could find on the sheets of paper and in the translation books. Within six questions of each girl, they both were brought close to tears. I was floored! Maybe my questions were too direct too quickly but I didn’t know how else to communicate with them. My questions only consisted of things that I wanted to know about them: their names, where they came from, if they liked working at the bar, how long they had been working at the bar, if they had a husband/boyfriend and if they had any children. Within those questions, the flood gates opened and past scars were revealed.
It made me think… what if we cared enough to ask anyone a few questions about their life? (And truly wanted to know the answers). What if we actually listened to someone’s answer when we asked them how they were doing? What if we took the time to speak to the elderly man who lives alone when we see him in the grocery store? What if we took the fatherless boy fishing on the weekend, since we were going anyways? What if we went to visit the widow down the street during a lazy Saturday afternoon? What if we took 30 minutes out of our busy day to speak to someone who may otherwise not be spoken to all week?
That night made me realize just how much our past scars still hurt. We all have them, either from past relationships or past events. And when I thought about mine, I realized that if someone truly cared enough to sit down and talk with me for 30 minutes and just asked me a few questions, even as guarded as I am, my scars would surface, as I think most people’s would.
The question is, would anyone truly care enough to sit down with someone and care what they had to say? Or would they constantly look at their watch because they had another appointment to get to? What if you were the person who God used to heal another’s life? What if you were the person who could make someone’s week? Would you do it?
