He was filling up a little red pickup truck that had a topper. He was wearing rubber boots. His overalls were tucked into them. I figured he was on his way fishing for the night. He was an older black man, his hair and beard sprinkled with gray. His face is ingrained in my mind.
He thought about it for a moment. I could tell he half-wanted to turn away. But I sought to convince him, telling him I like to pray for one person every day. He looked at me then. "Well, I suppose so. I can't refuse that." So I prayed for him, that God would bless him.
He shook my hand then. "God bless you, sir," he said.
Can't refuse. Those words stuck in my mind as I was driving home. Presented with Jesus, and an act of love -- strange though it may have seemed -- he couldn't refuse. Not that it had anything to do with me. Far from it. But I could tell that for him, the gospel mattered. The message mattered. Christ mattered. And when he knew this was Christ I was trying to proclaim, he couldn't refuse.
But so often I know that many other people -- many other Christians, myself included -- do refuse. Maybe not always. Maybe just in isolated moments. But we're presented God's love, his never-ending love, and we refuse. God never stops offering. His posture is always one of a loving father who wants his children to return to him, and we sometimes just won't do it. Maybe it's pride. Maybe we're angry at him. Maybe we project something onto him that is from our nature, not from his. Or maybe we want to let just a little of him in, but not a lot.
And so we refuse. But God keeps reaching out to us, lovingly and with a persistence that won't go away. All we have to do is say yes.
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