Hello,
“Got Conned, Part 2”
A couple of weeks ago I wrote of a visit to my office by a
man who was “hoping that I could help him”. As I wrote, such visits create quite conundrum in my
soul….to help or not to help…is help really help or hurt? Nonetheless, I decided to take the risk
and help him, only to feel quite certain that I had been conned when he left.
Well, now I am not so sure.
Friday at 1:11 a.m. my phone rang and awoke me out of a
sound sleep. A bit agrog I reached
over to my nightstand and took a quick peek to see if it was a local call, and
it was. I decided to answer the
call expecting it to be some emergency for one of the people in my church. I said, “Hello,” and the person on the
other end of the line said, “Hello, Jerry, this is…..”. The name did not come up in my mind as
one of my parishoners, but the caller continued talking as if he knew me really
well.
“I’m all shook up and I don’t know what to do,” and he went
on to say that he was getting some troubling phone calls. “All I know, is that I am trying to
protect my girlfriend and no one seems to be able to help.” And then I knew who it was…it was the
man who had come to my office for help.
“I’ve called the police.
They came, but they said there was no crime committed so they couldn’t
do anything. So, I’ve got my
Gideon Bible in front of me, and I am calling you.”
Still trying to sweep the cobwebs out and his story in, I
tried to settle him down a bit by telling him that as long as his door was
locked, he would be safe. I could
tell that he was quite shook, and this time I was quite sure that he was not a prank
call in the middle of the night. I
continued to try and talk him down, and as we talked it seemed to me that he
was settling down a bit.
“Read Psalm 49,” I told him, “It is the Psalm that Martin
Luther used to write a Mighty Fortress is our God.” (WRONG!!!! In my half awakedness, I messed up. I meant to turn him to Psalm 46.) I said, “Read it a couple of times, and
I am sure that when you wake up in the morning, you’ll see that God has indeed
been a mighty fortress for you.”
I can only imagine what he must have thought when he read
Psalm 49. It is about not fearing
being poor when the rich are after you.
I guess that I can only hope that somehow the Holy Spirit took the words
of that Psalm and brought peace to his heart.
When I hung up I was convinced that this man is battling
some sort of mental disease, and he is trying to stay above water as it keeps
pulling him down. It gave me cause
to rethink my first encounter with him.
He may indeed have conned me, fully believing that he was telling me the
truth. It may have been that the
stories that he had told me were historical in his mind, but historical fiction
in reality.
But his 1:11 a.m. phone call made one thing completely clear
to me; that no matter how his brain processed reality, he had experience real
care from me in my office that day.
Care enough to pull out my business card that I gave him and call me
when his world was coming apart.
It took me a while to get back to sleep, and I felt badly
when I discovered that I had directed him to a Bible verse that I had not
intended. When I woke up in the
morning, I thought about him, and on my drive to work, I went to work with
renewed hope…..hope that even when I fear that I have been conned, God doesn’t
let that stop him from reaching people with his life-giving grace.
Have a great week,
God’s grace and peace, (GGAP)
Pastor Jerry Nuernberger
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