Blog Details

I love how God guides us into random meetings with strangers that only HE could orchestrate.

Monday I was running errands and then stopped by Planet Fitness to get some much needed exercise. As I pulled into the parking lot I drove up by the entrance to move around to a row with more available parking spaces. Just as I approached the entrance a feeble older lady started walking across in front of me with her cane…very slowly. In cases like this I can be quite a pompous, impatient person not wanting to wait on anyone…even an elderly cripple. In our hustle and bustle of life we can be so irrationally in a rush and disdain people driving or walking in front of us… holding us up. Such is our flesh.

This time, as I waited for her to cross I felt that sometimes familiar inner voice telling me “you need to minister to that lady”. I ended up parking 5 cars down from her handicap parking spot and as I hopped out and walked towards the entrance and her car, she had opened her trunk and was trying to break open a big plastic wrapped batch of bottled water. I immediately walked to her and she didn’t hesitate to ask if I could help her break through the plastic to get one of her waters. The timing couldn’t have been more perfect for me to be there. Upon handing her the water I said with a smile “I guess men can still be good for something these days”. She said “Certainly so, and I miss my husband of over 55 years who passed away 2 years ago. He was a good Christian man and we had a good life”. I said, “Well, you were blessed more than most in these times to have a Godly husband” to which she replied “I certainly was”.

Her car was old and beaten down, somewhat like her, but her eyes and spirit were clear and resilient as she briefly told me how she had grown up in a mainline church that didn’t really preach salvation. Then in 1972, her husband’s “hippy” brother had found Jesus and was traveling around in his hippy Chevy van barefoot and in bib overalls witnessing to everyone he could about finding Jesus. He had a cottage up at Silver Lake, a beautiful vacation Mecca in Michigan near the Sleeping Bear Dunes. He invited Barbara, his brother, and their two babies to stay as often and long as they wanted at his cottage that summer…which they did. When they got there the first time, they found it littered everywhere with tracts and Bibles telling about Jesus. After a few short readings, Barbara and her husband found themselves persuaded to pray the prayer of repentance and salvation their church never preached and they immediately felt changed.

After that they went with family connections to a mainline church near Lansing where they got more grounding in the Bible and developed further in their faith. They then met some people who talked to them about a relationship with the Holy Spirit through a new level of commitment and experience. They experienced gifts of the spirit and upon asking their church pastor about this, they were basically excommunicated from that church. “We don’t teach that” they were told. From there they joined a well-known Pentecostal church and found themselves at home from there on for decades.

Barbara and her husband had 6 children who were all brought up in faith. There are two she is sure still believe and are involved in ministries, two are lukewarm believers in her eyes who she daily prays for, and unfortunately two are definitely not living for Jesus…but she has not given up hope or withholding her witness to them. Her main role/goal now is to stay in relationship with them and her grand babies and continually share the Gospel, especially with the little ones. I was able to encourage her briefly with my story and telling her “If God can restore me from where I went, He can easily restore your lost ones”.

I offered to have prayer with her to which she readily agreed. She specifically asked me to pray for tremendous pain in her spine that she was trusting God to heal as she works out when she can at the gym to help Him along. I was honored to lay hands on her back right there in the parking lot as people were walking by these two “old people” having a prayer meeting at the trunk of her car. She was agreeing with me in prayer very actively. I gave her a brief hug, and told her “now get on to that grandchild that needs to continually hear about what Jesus has done in your life”. I also said I hoped to see her again but that at least we know we will have eternity to look each other up again.

So next time I find myself getting impatient waiting for an elderly person to get across my path, I trust the Holy Spirit to remind me of Barbara.