They're Out There
I slowly walked up the front steps in a daze, shut the door, and stared at Jenna. The tears I didn’t want to come fell as they had earlier. I looked at her and in a croaked voice, explained.
Only an hour earlier I was getting ready to turn the key into the ignition when I saw them both crawl into the parking lot.
Two-women drove a 1980’s jeep into the gas station and I knew they had to be the ones. You see, I had been sitting in this spot for forty-five minutes praying that God would bring me someone in need.
“Are you serious?”
Her words still linger in my head today, along with my anxiety as to whether I was acting as some superior, tone-deaf crazy dude on the street who had no idea how offensive he was coming off. But moments before I had been pleading:
“Please bring someone”, I prayed. “I know You can, God, I believe you can.”
The seconds went by like a pointless eternity as I watched nice Hondas and Toyotas and big trucks with Hemis inside fill up and speed off, led by their busy, confident and capable looking drivers.
I was tired of waiting.
I needed to get back to work. The meetings I had to prep for and all the undone tasks ran through my head like a corporate herd of Tasmanian devils. I was feeling more and more anxious. And stupid.
“I’ve got one more minute, Lord.”
That’s when the obnoxious squeal of a half-running vehicle that wouldn’t pass any decent mechanic’s inspection rolled in. I knew almost immediately.
Still, I asked God for confirmation. Yep, they’re the ones. Right on time too.
But I didn’t get out of the car. I had that same urge I fight down every single time I approach a stranger. But over the years I’ve learned something: sometimes when you feel the fear of the unknown most intensely, that’s exactly when you’re in the will of God. Not always. But often.
Often times you need Him to calm the waters more often than you need to chart your own course. You need to be good with being really uncomfortable. You need to stop having a plan. You need to stop having an exit strategy for everything.
You need to do what He commands when everything in your carnal wisdom, with all its excuses, which are really just fear-driven thoughts, argue the opposite.
The woman had her back to me. I didn’t know how to say it, really. I never do.
“Hey ma’m.”
This was two-years ago, so I can’t recall the color of her hair now, or what she was wearing. The only thing I can’t get out of my memory is that look on her face. She didn’t respond, and waited for me.
“Do you mind if I pay for your gas?” I said.
Her eyes widened.
“Are you serious?”
I had noticed that she had been standing at the pump before I ever made my way over to where she was, not filling up, not walking inside, not going anywhere, and now, today, it all makes sense.
“Are you serious?” She repeated. “Like, this isn’t a joke?”
“Yep, no joke.”
Then she explained.
“While we were on our way over here we were telling each other we had no idea what what we were going to do. See, we’re empty and need to fill up but didn’t have any money. We said it was crazy to come, but we felt we decided to just come anyway and hoped that something would happen. Um, why are you doing this? Jenny? Jenny! Come over here!”
The other girl got out of the car, looking confused.
“This guy’s paying for our gas!”
Jenny looked to her friend and then to me. “No he’s not. What? Really?”
“I seriously have goosebumps right now! Why? Why do you do this?”
In under a minute I explained why and what and how. I told them that Christ gave his life away for me when I didn’t do anything to deserve it, and so I simply go out and give because He told me to. I had no idea who these women were, but it was easy to see they were poor, they were needy, and Jesus said,
“Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
Matthew 25:40 ESV
And the book of John says,
“But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? 18 Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth.”
1 John 3:17-18 ESV
Above all else, here’s what you have to know. This cost me 1 hour of time on a lunch break and forty dollars. A lunch Break.
Forty bucks.
That is nothing to me. It was easy.
We talked for a while about a lot of things. How crazy the situation was. Our city, the neighborhood. And then it wasn’t long before they started tearing up and both hugged me. I only let my eyes get watery. I was a man, after all.
I cried in the car on the way home.
And later in the house. And then in the…just kidding, I don’t cry that much.
But do you know what the experience really revealed? When I got back home and looked in the mirror I realized something powerful: How incredibly self-centered I am.
There are women and men all over my city who cry like me, hope like me, feel terror like me, lose sleep like me and need Jesus just like me. Some of them are often cold. Hungry. Living in dangerous situations every day. And would you like to know why I was really crying when I talked to Jenna after I came home?
It was my own selfishness that finally broke me. Or rather, Jesus broke me. I felt His love while simultaneously aware of my own selfishness that kept me from the poor. That was the only real cost: my fear and self-image. That was the sacrifice. This isn’t a tale about picking up your cross, or giving up all you have, as much as it is letting my self-image and my fear whither away. An awareness that my pride goes deeper than I like to admit.
An awareness of why I didn’t care, why I looked past the “least” of these, and all the fake rationale I built for why there wasn’t time, why they would be offended, and why, as my fearful mind persuasively argued, it was simply best to just pass by when I saw them.
Sometimes I wonder which character I am in The Good Samaritan. How often have I stepped over someone in my mind? How often have I passed by in the car? How often have I heard that story Jesus told me and naively assumed I was the good guy?
How often have you?
And what’s even crazier, why is it that I had never even cared to go looking in the highways and byways in the first place, like Jesus so plainly told me to?
Before I finally left, and all the tears were shed, I silently asked God for courage one more time, and then said:
“Can I tell you something?”
One of them was back in the car, the other getting ready to do the same. But they both turned, smiling.
“I want you to know, no matter what you’ve done, or whatever has been done to you, God offers you forgiveness. Christ gave His life away and died for all the wrong things you and I have ever done. He wants us to believe in Him.”
Of course, I had no idea how they would react. But they already knew that I cared about them, and maybe that’s why it came easier. I had also asked them questions and listened to them for awhile. So maybe it just felt normal by then. Anyway, so I guess I wasn’t surprised, then, that they just kept on smiling, like nothing was different, before the younger one said,
“Would you start a church here? I wish you would. Really, I would come.”
“Yeah I would too!”
Let me say this: my fear a few minutes earlier never would have told me that was going to happen. But those are the kinds of things that do happen when you listen to the still small voice of God, and to promptings that are spiritually and scripturally discerned, rather than your own fears.
I’m probably the last person that should start a church. And in the end, it’s Jesus who already started the church. We just have to participate.
And when it’s all said and done, you and I need to remember this one thing. We’ve got one life. One shot to do what Jesus said.
And they’re out there. We just need to go looking for them like Jesus did.
“Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”
1 John 2:5-6 ESV
Jonathan Runyan is a senior cyber security engineer and former pastor writing on the intersection of spiritual and virtual reality. You can read more about him here.