For a moment this Saturday, God removed the air of respectability in our town, and issued me a challenge. If you have a weak stomach don’t read on.
A forty seven year old man came for prayer. He was filthy and covered in dry vomit. The doctors had told him he wouldn’t make fifty if he didn’t stop drinking. Inside his jacket was a bottle of potcheen. He wept as he told us his story. He had lost his wife, his children, his home, his business. All he had left to lose was his life.
We knelt beside him to pray. His warning came too late and he vomited onto the ground. I wondered why I had brought two extra plastic bags out with me that morning. He filled the bags, and I cleaned the sick off the floor. We continued to pray and he embraced me with a vomit covered arm.
On a seat next to him was a young boy suffering with Tourette syndrome (Coprolalia), who was prone to loud outbursts of obscenities. Opposite him in another chair was a young man with paranoid schizophrenia, hooked on marijuana.
This is what it’s going to take to make a difference. Can you love the unlovely? Can you embrace one whose shame is so visible, and hide it with the Father’s love? Are you willing to get your hands and knees dirty to clean up another’s muck?
When this poor man left, the rain fell and removed the last traces of his vomit on the ground. When I returned home I could still smell his sick on my body, but I marvelled at God’s love for us.
