— 1 Cor. 13.13 (MSG)
My friend Caroline recently got home from helping lead a squad of roughly 50 missionaries out on the field. I was able to take her to dinner the other night and catch up and ask her about her experience. I told her that one of my favorite stories was about her ministering to a man on the street. You can read it here. I told her that that story reached hundreds of people (a truth). She smiled, laughed, and told me that it was a really funny experience.
Her and her co-leader Aaron walked by this guy on the street. As they passed him she thought to herself, he probably needs something to eat. So she went back and grabbed a banana out of her backpack to hand to the guy. When she started to hand it to him, she realized that he had no arms! Caroline said it was so funny because her and the man could only laugh. Her next thought was, I’ll just feed it to him. So she peeled the banana and fed it to the guy bite by bite. They didn’t speak the same language, so the only one they shared was laughter…
That story still gets to me. It was all driven by her realization that Jesus’ ministry was so simple. He shared the gospel and prayed for the sick. That was it. And Caroline yearned to do the same thing.
People like Caroline have eyes to see what isn’t there. She saw something in the beggar, a destiny, a greater purpose than just a normal man on the street corner. I know that she had faith to see his arms grow back, his belly be filled, and the joy of the Lord overflow his soul. I know that by her feeding him that day, his spirit soared with hope – hope because not everybody in the world’s going to walk by him. And I know that by her making love into a verb and more than words on her tongue, that a man torn down by the world had an encounter with God.
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