THE ONE PERSON…..
The date was September 11.
The year, though, was 2000.
These events were overshadowed by what happened one year later.
I was newly a Junior in college. 22 years ago…and we had just begun the school year a couple of weeks past. I had made a steady stream of friends, as was my habit those days, due to my fairly gregarious nature at the time.
And that day, I had walked into the Wesley House and, there was this woman sitting under the stained glass window. I didn’t think much of it, until we started chatting, and I got to know her. H
Mind you, I had been a follower of the King for about 17 years. And there were no lockdowns at the airports, nor were there any TSA, or Department of Homeland Security, no Tom Ridge, no Conservatives pretending to be proponents of lower spending or limited government. We were a bit more happy and care-free as a nation, and the Republican Party was not yet the bastion of uselessness into which it has grown.
Okay, maybe that is overstating the case, but lest you think the Democratic Party is less useless, ahem..
Anyway, Alyssa and I began chatting and I discovered, through our wandering conversation that she was not a follower of Messiah.
So, in an act that I honestly do not regularly engage in, because I have seen how frequently witnessing to people goes that you barely know, I sensed that maybe this one was white and ready to harvest.
So, I began the process of showing her, a basic idea of what salvation was about. And she was interested. And we spent time praying and talking in the coming weeks. She walked into the kingdom, I spent time handing her regular passages of the biblical text to read, and she began to grow by leaps and bounds. We played quite a bit of chess during those ensuing months, and began working on ministry endeavors together, and she was growing into her own walk with Yeshua.
And then, about the time I had graduated and moved to Tennessee to spend the summer in Nashville working as a summer camp counsellor, something changed. The only person I had ever directly “led to the L-rd” had begun to fall away. And I had had a couple of conversations with her by phone, and then, everything ceased altogether.
And every year, this time of year, when so many people come back to what happened on the corporate level, I think back to what had happened on an individual level, to my friend. I am not sure what happened, but I still pray and mourn for the loss. And I know I am not the only one that misses her sunny contribution to our community of faith. I have several friends that I know also miss her.
But, in this post 9/11/2000 world, I continue, puttering away, doing what I was made to do.
And I wait for news of her return home…as with many other close friends of those days. Brian, Casey, Jon…and I am grateful for the friends who remain from that season. We mourn the presence of the holes left behind by these precious brothers and sisters. And, simultaneously, we hope for their reconciliation, not to a church, or a denomination, but to the One Man.
So, when you have friends from seasons passed, and the L-rd reminds you to pray for them, please be encouraged to do so. For the King is not yet done with their lives, lovelies.