She didn’t look sick the Sunday she walked in. She just introduced herself and declared, abruptly and honestly, that she was ‘not a normal church person.’ But she believed in prayer. Mostly, she explained, because she saw a scientific study in Newsweek Magazine and the statistics were in, prayer changed things. And sometimes, she said, sick people got better. Or, at least they got better more quickly. And, “Oh yeah,“ she said, “I like the idea of Jesus, but I’m not sure about the church thing.”
And she didn’t look sick, but she had a rare brain cancer that was often fatal.
So, she and I and her girlfriends prayed and asked for God’s help. And he did help her, though not to get better physically, rather, to get better spiritually. That is, she came to know God personally. She couldn’t stomach the notion that some describe as “asking Jesus to come live in her heart.” She told me once it sounded “too cheesy.” She described the whole thing as simply asking Jesus to “remember her name, like the thief on the cross I read about once in Sunday school, a long time ago,” she explained one day while she was sitting on her front room couch, just after they had shaved her head while her 4-year-old daughter kept pointing at her as if to ask, “Mommy, what’s happening?”
I had the privilege of baptizing her — at her request — just before she died. And when they called me that morning and I raced over to the house I saw she was lying on that same front room couch. But it was too late, she was already gone. I stayed with her family and her 4-year-old daughter until they took her away. And I had the privilege of officiating at her memorial, and watching her father gently place her box of ashes on the back of his Harley…on a rack he built just for that special purpose. And he took her for a ride through town before they buried her, just like he had done so many times before, when she was alive.
And I remember her telling me, during one of our visits – before she knew she was going to be leaving, “I really like that time Jesus met the Samaritan woman. My boyfriend read it to me again the other night.”
I asked her, “why?”
“Cause Jesus loved her, just the way she was. Even though she was from the wrong side of town, she was in the wrong social category, she was up to all the wrong things, and she even had all the wrong attitudes. She was kinda like me.”
I smiled, “You’re not a normal church person.” I replied. She just nodded, smiling. Ever had an encounter that totally changed your life?
For more information, contact PastorJimCPC@hughes.net or visit our website at www.centrepointe.org .