you gotta check out kate's most recent post...it's a good one. it's making me think of my own stories. i've actually been thinking about them a lot lately. the things i did when i was a kid, and that includes the kid i was up until a few years ago. who am i kidding...in a lot of ways i'm still a kid. but it also has me thinking of stories from the last couple of years...
kate said she is going to start a series of stories of people she meets in madison...i thought i would share a few.
cyndi and i went to seattle for our honeymoon and we made a concious decision to talk and spend time with the homeless we would encounter there. i remember meeting this guy on a street corner, he was clean shaven and probably late 30's or early 40's.
he started talking to me on the corner and wasn't one to just ask for money. he wanted me to know that he wanted to work, that he had been in Seattle for a few years, slept under an overpass, and tried to shave and wash as often as possible. i told him we were on our way somewhere but he would walk with us, so he did and we chatted...after a few more minutes, i asked if he like cheesecake. he said, "it's my favorite!" i told him that we were on our way to the cheesecake factory to get a piece and asked if he would like a piece. of course he said of course.
this is where the story had an impact for me. as the three of us walked through the doors of the cheesecake factory, this guy is just looking around, all around, and up at the high ceiling...i asked him, and he told me, that he had never been in there before. we took our cheesecake out on the patio, sat down and ate our cake together and parted ways.
what impacted me was that he had been in Seattle for three years and he said cheesecake was his favorite, yet he had never been in the cheesecake factory.
i think about this story and at least 3 or 4 others from our trip to Seattle and other times like these here in the quad cities...and i think about how long it's been since i've had a new story like this. and not to just have a story, but to know that God used me to show someone what He is really like. i wish i could say this is an every day occurance for me, but it isn't. it has become less and less. where has/had this compasssion gone. but i think it is still there somewhere...
because, the other day i met a guy named mike at st. guiseppe's pizza. he noticed i had a guitar in my car and asked if played...i was there to study, so my first inclination was to answer his questions in as few words as possible, but he kept asking questions, so i felt like i needed to ask him questions...eventually i brought my guitar inside the store and played a few songs for him and he returned the favor.
mike is probably in his late 40's and has struggled with mental illness and drugs most of his life. one of the songs he sang was one he wrote about the "progress place" that is now called the "drop-in" and it was so good. it wasn't something i could ever write or even pull off covering. his voice was a mix of johnny cash and i can't put my finger on it. his songs were so much like johnny, but he didn't seem to know that when i mentioned it.
a couple of months ago, a very good friend of mine gave me a guitar he felt prompted to give me by God, and that was the guitar i had at st. guiseppe's that day, and i felt like mike was supposed to have it, so i gave it to him. mike came to church last week. it happened to be the week i was preaching and today i'm going to lunch with him.
i like the way kate put it in her post, about the kingdom coming down, the fire of heaven, and everything is burning. i take that to mean that you either look around and see nothing, a fallen world, or everything burning in the redempitive work of heaven's fire. i want fire reflecting in my eyes.
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