I guess she’d just been thinking she was too old. She was eighty, maybe. She lives with her son but really, she lives alone. Her husband died a few years back – his income was the only income. What she has left of his pension her son spends on beer. He sleeps in the garden and doesn’t answer his phone. She said he probably won’t believe her when she tells him Americans came to say “Hi”… He thinks she’s crazy enough already. It’s sad but we all laugh with each other, I’m not sure what at. We broke bread as we sat around her living room on the pullout sofas. “This is where I sleep” she said, pointing to the one I was on, “and that one is my son’s.” She said it was hard for her to see our faces for the one glass eye… “Maybe it’s for the best” I said, “I’m really not that pretty.”
“I wish he were here” she would say, “but he’s probably drinking already and I don’t know where he is.” “I wish he could hear you speak though, he has such a soft heart…” But I was happy just to have met her and we all told her that. “We are here for you, Regina.”
She told us all about how she had heard His name and how she thought “there must be something more” but lowered her head and said she’d never read His book before. We all smiled — maybe to encourage — but deep down I knew that I’d misjudged her. “You’ve got to start somewhere” we said. We started reading.
He heals the blind;
He offers rest;
His law is on our hearts and His Word is alive.
“It takes a lot of faith, doesn’t it?” She asked. And it felt like it was the wrong answer but I said “Yeah, I guess it does.”
A couple silent moments pass and Codie told her about the mustard seed. (I love when she says what the Spirit puts in her heart.) It almost made Regina cry, I think. It all seems so easy when we say it but she thinks she’s too old and that she must have missed her chance. Admittedly, she’s glad that we’re all so joyful and she feels lighter having talked with us but says her faith isn’t “big enough” and wonders why we’d waste our time with her.
“I don’t know, Regina.” I think… “I want to love you because I think you deserve it. I want to share in your pain and make us both better for it. Yeah, and sometimes it does feel like I’m wasting my time. I’ve been going to houses all over the world just like yours for months now and not one person has taken up The Cross. I don’t know what I’m doing, sometimes.” Of course, I didn’t say any of that. What I did say was like something I remember from the Psalms, “Today if you hear His voice, don’t harden your heart.” And I smiled, memories of my first conversation with Him flashing like little thunderstorms in my mind.
A few minutes later we were cleaning up, our feet shuffling towards the door. Our translator suggested we ask her if she wants to receive Jesus.
Everything stopped.
That question sounds so easy the way she says it.
But we did. We asked, hopefully:
“Regina, do you want to accept Jesus into your heart today?”
…
“Maybe tomorrow.”
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