By Jen, University DTS student (read part 1 here)
Our team leader encouraged us to spread out into the train station and “take a risk with God” as we met people, His treasures. You could even say we were “treasure hunting.” Back home, we had prayed for the people we would meet here. When we prayed, one of my friends had a picture come to mind of a blue cast. I wondered if during this “treasure hunt” we would meet anyone with a blue cast.
As my friends and I waited for the train to come, a man approached us to ask for money. I turned around and my eyes must have widened a bit. There, on his left arm, was a blue cast.
My heart started that familiar rhythm again, you know the one: when everything else fades to the background and a spotlight finds you in that scene, at that moment, and time stops.
“Can we pray for you?” my friend, Jeremiah, asked. He must have felt the time-stopping spotlight, too.
But the man hurried away.
He must not have understood. We looked through our dictionaries and figured out how to ask him in his language. The man was not hard to find. “Can we pray for you?” Jeremiah asked again.
Again, the man left. But this time we couldn’t find him.
Half an hour later, we were approached by another beggar with an infected foot. We didn’t have money for him, so he, too left. I wasn’t going to let him go so easily. You see, time stood still again, my heart in my throat.
The angry infection on his foot looked so painful, and the dirty street would do nothing to heal it.
“I’m going to ask to clean his foot,” I announced.
Armed with some first aid supplies, my friends and I set out to find him. He was in a corner, still begging for money but being ignored by everyone who passed by. With the help of a translator, I asked him if I could clean the wound on his foot.
“I want to just cut it (my foot) off,” he said, cleaning the sore with an antiseptic wipe. “It will only get worse. I’m trying to get enough money for the operation.”
We prayed with him and I felt the presence of God with me. Again, all else faded to the background and it was just us there, loving this man with the love of God. I prayed that God would heal him so he wouldn’t lose his foot. When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see that a crowd had formed around us. People were even snapping pictures.
I realized my hands were sweaty and I was shaking a little bit. What is happening to me? I wondered. What’s happening in my heart?
I thought about the man with the cantaloupe, the man with the blue cast, and now this man with the wounded foot. I continue to feel like I cannot do enough to show these people the love of God.
The rhythm in my heart is still changing from what it was, it is still beating with God’s.
L-O-V-E.
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