Two weeks ago, I was driving home from my sister's house. It's maybe a 10-mile drive, mostly on city streets. But it's not crowded, and I was thinking to myself at the time that I kind of liked the drive -- all but a small portion of it. It was a weird thought, because there's not much variation in what you see on that particular stretch of road, just a lot of homes and a few older shopping centers. But my mind had pinpointed a roughly one-mile stretch of that drive that I just didn't care for. It was a thought that passed quickly, and I just went back to my driving and thinking about the other important stuff of the day. But the thought came back when I hit that spot in the road. That's when I noticed the adult video store.
It has been there for years, tucked in a little strip center, not really catching any notice from anyone. Except, I suppose, from the people who go in there. That's when I knew I would have to come back. Today, I did. You have to pass it on the way to a hardware store that I frequent. And before I even started on the trip, I knew I had to go in there. My adrenaline was pumping the entire drive, a really nerve-wracking sensation. I waited in the parking lot for a couple of minutes.
Then a man came out carrying a sack. He went around to his trunk and started moving stuff around back there. He was about 50, with short hair, dressed like an ordinary guy, on an ordinary Saturday, on an ordinary errand. He was slamming the trunk shut when I walked up to him. We exchanged a hello, and I asked if I could ask him a question. He said I could. "Can I pray for you?" His response was immediate. "No." I paused a moment then, and nothing else came to my mind to say. "Well," I said, "thanks for answering me." He smiled then and shrugged, "Straight question, and a straight response." Indeed.
Then I went into the store. I wondered when I got there if it was the same kind of store that I'd always thought it to be. There was a Da Vinci Code poster on the front window. It's pure fiction, but it's not porn. However, the door urged -- with a "please" -- that people should be 18 to enter. So when I walked inside, I stopped just inside the door and looked around. It took about two seconds to see that, yes, this was exactly the kind of store I knew it to be.
So I turned to the clerk, who was staring at a computer. I stood there for a few seconds, waiting for him slowly to recognize me. Then I asked if the owner was in. "No," he said, standing up slowly and looking me in the eye. He was a younger guy, about 35, with a shaved head and a short beard. He wore a flat expression. "What do you want?" he said. I sensed no friendliness in his tone. "I wanted to pray for the owner," I said, and then without hesitating, "Can I pray for you?" He considered this for just a moment. He'd been chewing tobacco, and I watched as he spit a darkened round of it into a plastic bottle. "No," he replied. I paused again, and like the first time, nothing else came to my mind to say. So I thanked him and left.
I prayed for both of those men as I drove away.
Those were the quickest two "no's" I've gotten. Some people might say I wasted my time there. Or that I'm nuts -- some crazed Christian, a would-be evangelist. I worry about that sometimes. But I know the call God laid on my heart, to go in there, a place of sin, and take the Holy Spirit with me. Who knows when the last time someone did that. And who knows what that first guy might think about tonight when he takes that video out of its box. And who knows what that clerk will think about the rest of the day, when he leaves that place and drives by the church that's not a block away. God works through people, and I pray that today, he worked through me.
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