Day 23: A cherry limeade

I learned something today. Actually two somethings. The first is that parents should pray for their children. And, perhaps just as importantly, they should make sure their children know they’re praying for them.

A guy named Polo taught me that. I had again spent the day in the office, and so I left intent on finding someone to talk to. I wound up at Sonic of all places. I bought a cherry limeade to take home to Mary. The car hop was a kid about 17 years old. His name badge said “Polo” – like the shirt, he explained. He handed me the drink and asked if I needed anything else. “Yes,” I said, “can I ask you a weird question?” He smiled and said I could. The smile caught my attention – it was from ear to ear – and he said he got a lot of weird questions in his job. So I asked if anyone had prayed for him that day. “No, not today,” he said. And then he stopped and changed his answer -- “Well, my mother did.” That sounded good to me. “She prayed for you today?” I asked. “She prays for me every day,” he said.

I thought that was a great response. He also let me pray for him. When I finished, he gave me another big smile and then stuck out his hand to shake mine. I thought it was a good lesson. He knew his mother was praying for him every day. That’s a comforting feeling, knowing someone always is going to God on your behalf, asking for a blessing for you or for protection or for guidance. But parents should make sure their children know it. I want to make sure my kids know.

The second lesson I learned today was this: Mary is liking this project more and more. The cherry limeade was nice. Yesterday, I bought her gum at the dollar store. And a couple of weeks ago, I bought her M&Ms while looking for someone to pray for. She’s made another suggestion already: Pray for someone who’s selling chocolate cake.

Only if God opens the door.

Scripture of the day: “Remember this – a farmer who plants only a few seeds will get a small crop. But the one who plants generously will get a generous crop. You must each decide in your heart how much to give.” – 2 Corinthians 9:6-7a.

Day 22: Laboring on Labor Day

We were coming back from buying doughnuts this morning (happy birthday, Isabella!) when I saw the car in the parking lot of the Dollar General. A single car, probably an employee, I thought. So they were open on Labor Day, too. I drove by at first and then, thinking better of it, turned around.

He didn’t seem happy to be there. Who would on a day like this? I bought gum for Mary. She always needs more gum. And I asked him if he’d been busy today. He told me he opened the store at 8. It was about 8:10. So no, he hadn’t been busy. I asked him how long he’d been working there. Three months, he said. (The store opened about three months ago.)

So I made no headway with small talk. And by this time, he’d handed me my receipt. So I asked him if I could pray for him. There was that pause – the same one everyone has at that question, out of the blue. Sure, he said, that would be nice. His demeanor seemed to change ever so slightly. But it was noticeable. He was curious at least. So I prayed for him. He smiled and thanked me as I left.

Day 21: Knowing the story

I’d never really talked seriously about God to my little brother in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. I’ve known him for nearly four years. I see him regularly. He knows our family very well. He’s prayed with us at meal times. He’s gone to VBS – twice. And I’ve always known that he knows almost nothing about God.


So I asked him today to talk to me about God as we were driving. He’s 13 and comes from a very non-typical household. He also has trouble with his attention span – and was playing with the radio in the car -- so I repeatedly had to refocus the conversation. Basically, he recounted the story of Christ’s death. I’d heard him tell part of this story before. He’d seen it on a movie one time – about how they beat Jesus up, made him carry a cross, and then nailed him to it (here my little brother pointed to the center of each palm and then to his feet). Then he told me how they put the cross up on the side of a cliff next to another guy, and Jesus died. There was a woman there, he said. He thought she was Jesus’ mother. Then they put Jesus’ body in the ground and rolled a big rock in front of it. But when the woman went to look for him later, he wasn’t there. And then my little brother stopped talking.

Well, I said, where was Jesus? He just shrugged: “I don’t know. He was just gone.” What a sad answer! So I told him that Jesus didn’t stay dead, that he rose again and walked out of that tomb. I told him that Jesus died on that cross so we could live with him in heaven. But first we have to accept Jesus, to believe in him. I told my little brother he would have to make a decision one day about whether or not he believed in Jesus.

I asked whether he understood. He nodded. And then he shrugged and went back to fiddling with the radio.

Day 20: The porn shop

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.

Day 19: My grandmother … plus one

I visited my grandmother today -- on orders from my mother. This is a hard time for our family, and grandma had tears in her eyes when she came to the door. Two weeks ago, my aunt – her daughter – was killed in a motorcycle accident.

So it was a time of talking, of finding ways to make her smile. She said she was convinced that my aunt and my grandfather, who died several years ago, were together again in heaven. And grandma says she’s holding onto the good memories. But it still is hard, and tears seemed to come at barely the thought of it. So we prayed together for comfort.

That was in the morning. Hours later, across town, I was sitting across the table from my new case manager in the Big Brothers Big Sisters program. She was the mother of five mostly grown children, and was just returning to the workforce after spending decades as a stay-at-home mom. It took her nine years to earn her college degree. But while she said she had been nervous about it, she had relatively little trouble finding a job. She was thankful for that.

As we were wrapping up our meeting, I posed my question to her. She immediately agreed, telling me she was a Christian. I had figured that already. So we prayed about this new challenge in her life. “Thank you. I’m going to need that today,” she said as we parted ways.

It was reinforced to me that life doesn’t stop. There’s always something else. And we may hurt for a while, but God is calling us to more. He gives us comfort, heals our wounds and sends us out to serve others.

Scripture of the day: “’Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth.’ The Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress.” -- Psalm 46:10-11. 

Day 18: Talking tobacco

I’d seen him a lot during the past few weeks, walking slowly up and down the street in front of our office, scouring the ground for cigarettes. Partially smoked ones. I asked him about his effort this morning while I was walking into work.

The goal, he told me, was to clip off the portion that still had tobacco in it, and use that to roll his own cigarettes. He was diligent about it, always patient, picking the butts out from between the bricks of the street. He only needed enough tobacco to make four cigarettes per day. Once he found enough, he would go home. In particular, he was looking for cigarettes used by “puffers,” whom he described as people who only gently smoke their cigarettes and don’t pull all the nicotine out of them before throwing them into the street.

His name was Bill. He looked like an ordinary guy, about 50 years old, and friendly. He was out of work. “There aren’t any jobs,” he said. He once told a woman he’d work for her and all she had to pay him was enough to buy his cigarettes and coffee. But she said even that was too much. And so he appeared content in his morning search for cigarettes.

He wore a necklace with a cross on it. And he talked about how people sometimes worried about him. But there was nothing to worry about. We’re all much the same, he says. Everyone has a dark side that they know about but refuse to tell others. He told me I had one, too. I couldn’t disagree. And he said too many people are afraid to talk to each other, and so, essentially, hate grows from that.

When I asked if I could pray for him, he immediately agreed. I prayed that he would find what he was looking for and that God would come close to him. We shook hands then and went our separate ways.

Day 17: Waiting for a ride

For some reason, I found myself in front of the hospital. Maybe it was just on my brain because my family has spent so much time in hospitals during the past couple of weeks. Or maybe it was because that's where  a lot of hurting people are. But there I was, looking to see where God would lead me.


I parked just outside the emergency room. I saw the chaplain's parking spot was empty when I pulled into the lot, but I didn't park there. I passed several people walking in, and saw a row of people through the window of the emergency room. They were waiting to have their emergencies taken care of. And then I was into the main lobby. 


There was a security guard there, and a receptionist having a relatively heated discussion on the phone. And every now and then a nurse would walk by. After a moment, I saw an older woman standing in the big revolving door, apparently waiting for a ride. She was holding a bag that contained shoes and some other stuff. 


I asked if I could pray for her. She thought about this for a moment. "I don't know whether I need prayer or not," she said. I told her I'd be happy to pray if she'd just give me the OK. She paused a moment longer, and then, "Well, I guess you can." So I prayed for her. She thanked me, and I left.


But it would be a lie to say today was a total success. I passed up -- physically just walked on by -- what I felt was a good opportunity to talk to someone downtown earlier in the day. The guy was standing in front of an old hotel. He wasn't doing much, just looking up at the building. He was probably a visitor from out of town who was staying there. I immediately felt bad as I was walking away. I'm convicted that travelers need prayer. They're away from their families and their homes and the things that hold them accountable.


So I'm praying for more courage.


Scripture of the day: "And he died for all, that those who live should no longer live for themselves but for him who died for them and was raised again." -- 2 Corinthians 5:15