Obedience to God puts us in places where God often speaks, sometimes through unlikely persons. In obedience to Him, I went through the motions of serving the people, who came into the Rock House Ministry.
This particular evening I was anxious to put the sight, smell and sound behind me, so I dashed for the stairs. My descent was halted by a coarse, smelly young woman blocking the stairway hunkered on a step.
When I stalled, she began to talk. Not wanting to be rude, I turned toward her to listen. As she began to ramble I began to suspect she had blocked the stairs as a means to obtain a listener.
Her conversation went back to the time when she was 14. This young lady had 11 years of experiences that would have crushed the spirit of the faint-hearted.
As we talked, an older man with whom she lived wandered across the street. She spotted him coming and quickly explained, "He didn't come to the services that evening because he wasn't feeling well". She elaborated about her hunger pangs and anxiety to consume the sandwich she had received after the service; yet she continued to clutch it in her hand.
As he came closer she continued to talk. With the sharing of each experience the sag in her shoulders lessened.
Quietly and without any pretense or show, she slipped the sandwich into the hands of the old man. When she realized I had seen her pass the food to the old man, she commented, "I really wasn't hungry”. By this time, my husband had begun to try descending the stairs. When he couldn’t precede any further, he just stood and listened. He had seen the sandwich transaction. He turned and slipped back upstairs.
Soon he descended the stairs; discreetly he tucked something into the young woman's hand. She glanced at it and began stuffing it into her. In my mind's eye I saw a flashback of the sandwich she had quietly slipped to the old man and was reminded of her comment, "I wasn't hungry".
She shared her pain, lessons learned from the street and most of all her unselfish love for others. The first step of obedience had set me in line to learn the lesson God had planned for me that day and given me a chance to serve as God's ears.
All rights owned by Brenda K. Blakely are available for free use with permission. Email the1145call@gmail.com for permission to use.
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