Jesus reached out His hand and touched… Matthew 8:3
The first day of the conference had gone long and it was after ten o’clock when it let out. We were tired and ready to head home as my sister Linda and I left the building along with several thousand other women. We chatted happily about the different speakers we had heard that day. As two hearts shared what the day had meant to them, a breeze stirred and the palm trees appeared to nod in agreement of God’s power and love.
We had been walking several minutes when Linda and I realized that things did not look familiar. We stopped and held a mini-conference and decided we were headed in the wrong direction, so we turned around and walked the opposite way. We were walking against the vast tide of other tired women who apparently knew just where they were going. It wasn’t long before we realized this way didn’t seem right either, so we proceeded to walk around the building trying desperately to remember landmarks we had seen some fourteen hours earlier when we had arrived.
We came to a stop and stood looking around for anything even vaguely familiar. I have had senior moments before, but never simultaneously with someone else -- it’s not good. Not only had we forgotten where we had left the car but also the all important rule that only one of us was allowed to have a senior moment at a time. We started walking again so as not to call attention to the fact that we had no idea where we were going. We began to feel a bit like the Israelites wandering about; only our desert was the Honda Center parking lot.
We were beginning to wonder if morning would find us still searching, but after a bit more wandering, we spotted a familiar display and recalled passing it that morning. With relief in our hearts we turned our steps toward the correct parking lot and our conversation back to the day’s events. We reached the car and in no time at all we were out of the parking lot. We laughed at the unexpected benefit of our parking lot wanderings; most of the cars were already gone from our section, and we had escaped the slow inch-by-inch journey to the gates. We got on the freeway unaware that we were part of something God had planned, and it was already in motion.
Time sped by as we talked and laughed in that special way only sisters share. We were minutes away from Linda’s house as we talked about how tired we were and glad we were nearly home. We headed down the hill and as we rounded a bend suddenly there was a car stopped and a man lying in the road and I shouted “Stop!” Linda pulled to the curb as we watched a young man kneeling next to the man on the road.
Linda called 911 on her cell phone, and as she was talking we watched in horror as a car came flying down the hill and for a moment we were certain both men were going to be hit, but the car missed them, the driver never slowing down or appearing to give a second thought to what might be happening. Linda lost the phone signal but had given our location before her cell phone went dead. She got out and headed into the street and I ran to the Well – you can always meet Him at the Well, you know, even at the side of the road.
“Lord,” I whispered, “please help us.” I looked up and saw Linda kneeling on the asphalt, one hand on the injured man’s back, and then she and the young man were trying to help him to his feet but he was unable to stand. I watched as Linda and the younger man wrapped their arms around the fallen man and he leaned on them and as they walked I thought I caught a glimpse of another Man in their midst, one with nail-pierced hands and fire in His eyes.
They got the man to the curb and helped him lie down and Linda came back to the car. “We need something to put under his head,” she said. As we searched the car for a jacket or blanket or anything we could use to place under his head, she told me his name was James. We were unable to find anything that would serve as a cushion for James’ head and as we turned to head back to James, Linda said, “He’s thirsty.” I remembered I had a bottle of water in my purse so, glad I had something to offer, I opened the bottle of water and handed it to Linda as we made our way back to the curb.
I knelt down on the sidewalk and looked at this man before me. He did not smell of alcohol, so he wasn’t drunk as we had first thought. I studied his bearded face as he drank the water. His eyes were blue and in them I saw fear and confusion. His arms, face and hands were scraped and he was bleeding. He was dirty and rather ragged, his long hair and beard graying and unkempt, and Linda asked him what happened but he wasn’t sure. At first he had said he fell down the embankment, but now he thought he may have been hit by a car. His hands trembled and his body shook and we wondered if he was in shock. He was wearing two wrist bands like those worn in a hospital, and we wondered if he had been in a facility of some sort but we were unable to tell what was written on the wrist bands in the darkness. The young man had found a t-shirt in his car and he carefully placed it under James’ head amidst assurances from Linda that help was coming.
I watched quietly as Linda rubbed his shoulder and touched his arm and talked with him in soothing tones of motherness. I turned as another car pulled up behind Linda’s and I got up to go see who was stopping. It turned out to be my mother and my Aunt Virginia. They had been to the women’s conference with us, were on their way to Linda's house where we would all spend the night, and (unnoticed by us), driven past the scene at the side of the road, recognized us, made a quick u-turn and hurried back to see what had happened. I filled them in on the situation and they waited with us and soon we heard sirens, and a moment later a fire truck pulled up.
The young firemen jumped off the fire truck, putting gloves on as they walked. Linda told them what had happened and they began talking with James. One of the firemen asked Linda if she had any disinfectant hand cleanser, and when she nodded that she did he told her to use it. Then he told us we were free to go. We told James goodbye and Linda assured him he would be okay now. We walked back to the car and realized then why the fireman had asked about disinfectant. Linda had been touching James and he was bleeding. Linda hadn’t thought about HIV or Hepatitis C – all she thought about was helping someone who was hurt and scared and obviously lost.
As we got in the car we could hear more emergency vehicles coming as sirens cried through the darkness. We pulled away from the curb leaving James behind, and we wondered quietly what would become of him.
Later as I lay in bed my soul sat down at the Well and I thought about James. James was someone’s son. What had happened in his life that brought him to this place of homelessness and aloneness? Did he have brothers and sisters somewhere? Was there anyone who thought about him or cared for him? “I think about him and I care about him,” a familiar voice said. My heart looked up as He who loves me sat down with me at the Well.
I told the Lord all about the events of the evening as though I needed to catch Him up on things, silly me. He listened carefully as I told him all about it. He didn’t try to rush me or tell me He already knew; He simply listened. He likes it when I tell Him everything that is on my heart. He took me to His Word and read to me from Matthew 8 and told me about a man who had a horrible disease called leprosy. When He read verse 3 to me my heart sat very still: “Jesus reached out His hand and touched the man.” We sat quietly and I remembered something my sister said after we had arrived back at her house. She had quietly said, “I really smell.” I thought of her wrapping her arms around James as she and the other young man had helped James off the street. I returned my thoughts to what He who loves me had just shared from His Word and a thought occurred to me just then: He must have smelled pretty bad sometimes at the end of a day of working among the sick, hurting, broken, wounded, and dying people He loved, and I knew He loved James too.
I sat very still thinking about the events of the day and then I wondered what would have happened if Linda and I had not become disoriented outside the Honda Center and had to hunt for the right parking lot. We would have been about thirty minutes earlier and I realized we would likely have missed James altogether. I turned to Him who loves me and asked, “Lord, did you cause Linda and me to lose our way so we would get to James at just the right moment?” His eyes danced as He softly said, “For you are My Father’s workmanship, created in Me to do good works, which My Father prepared in advance for you to do.” I recognized the words from Ephesians 2:10 and my heart sat up as the truth of those words sank deep.
My eyes grew heavy and I turned out the light and my heart remained still in the Lord’s presence, and as sleep drew near to carry me away I thought I saw a tiny corner of heaven open...and for just a moment I glimpsed His glory and then I thought I heard Him who loves Me praying – He does that, you know. I realized He was praying for James, and my heart smiled and nestled down quietly and I drifted off to sleep with His presence surrounding me, and His prayers for a man named James thundering through my heart.
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