“I may cry.”
The bald dude with the big old beard unexpectedly spoke those words while standing in my open front door last Wednesday.
Just about three minutes earlier he spoke my name and I turned to see him standing on my front porch through the door I left open when I came in with my hands full.
“Gerry?”
He obviously knew me, but I didn’t recognize the 40 year-old man who stood there. The last time I saw him he was 13 and lived a couple of doors away. He moved to Oklahoma with his mother when his parents divorced.
He told me who he was and that he just wanted to drop by and say hi.
I invited him in and went to the back of the house to get Mrs. Sweetie. I told her we had a visitor who wanted to see her but I wanted her to see if she could figure out who it was.
When we returned to the living room he was still standing in the open doorway and he spoke those words: “I may cry.”
And then he leaned over to my wife and said, “I just wanted to come and say thank you for leading me to the Lord in your front yard all those years ago.”
He went on to tell us about his life—the “hellion” years and then getting his life together, getting married, having a child, and traveling “all over” on mission trips with his church. He said it all started next to the oak tree in our front yard.
We spent about 30 minutes reminiscing and celebrating the goodness and grace of God in his life. It was such a special and serendipitous interruption in the middle of a busy afternoon.
After he left to go back to his family (who had no idea where he had wondered off to), Sweetie asked me if I had any recollection of that event more than 25 years ago.
Because she didn’t.
It’s not that she’s losing her memory. But that moment in our front yard didn’t change her life. It was just a few minutes with a kid from the neighborhood in the middle of an unexceptional day where she shared her faith in an unexceptional way.
It was his life that was changed. It started in that moment, took awhile to gain traction, had some fits and starts along the way, and will continue to be challenged and tested as long as he lives.
Just like every person of faith.
But the trajectory was changed for eternity.
No fanfare or fireworks except in the unseen realm where the angels rejoiced.
Jesus said,
“In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away! … In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents” (Luke 15:7,10).
I’m convinced that the most significant moments in life happen in the middle of ordinary days. We really can’t plan for them or control them. We can only prepare our hearts to experience them when they come.
Be amazing today, my friend.
