His Ways Are Higher

His Ways Are Higher.  (even in Long Beach)

With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 2 Peter 3.9

Even in my dreams, I saw the face of the Duke of Earl who had told me he had been running from God for a long time . . . I would see big Bobby sitting in a little Los Angeles jail cell needing the all-consuming love of God to meet him where he was. All week long, I had the passionate urgency and burden in my heart for several of my Long Beach friends.   I searched for just the right song that would complement the lesson I had prepared.  I knew what I wanted it to say –

            Have you been walking on a surface that's uncertain?

Have you helped yourself to everything that's empty?

You can't live this way too long.

There's more than this, more than this.

Have you been standing on your own feet too long?

Have you been looking for a place where you belong?

You can rest, you will find rest.

Let this old life crumble, let it fade.

Let this new life offered be your saving grace.

Let this old life crumble, let it fade. . .

                Jeremy Camp, “Let it Fade”

Funny thing is, I hadn’t even made it to the basement room on Friday, when I was confronted with trouble.  ‘But if we love one another, God lives in us!’ he shouted in her face, as she screamed back, ‘I have the Holy Spirit in me, I know about love…’  And the building overseer said to me, ‘He can’t come in here…the lady who serves sandwiches called, and said he scared her . . . oh, we’ve got trouble here now,’ he wrung his hands sorta like Dustin Hoffman in “Rainmaker” and walked away.  I looked from face to face and asked the ‘troublemaker’ his name, and invited him into pray with us; the lady came too, and sat at the next table.

‘My goodness, Lord—this is not starting out well—please help me . . .help us!’ I prayed as I walked slowly down the stairs into the huge basement room.  Then I opened in prayer, thanking God for the sparkling morning; I invited him into our presence.  One by one, folks thanked God for his good gifts—health, salvation, life, breath; two people had gotten places to live, and another had been accepted to a treatment program. 

I must confess I kept watching the door for the Duke of Earl to come in… finally, he did, but I was already done teaching on recommitment, and making Jesus number one in our lives.  He looked exhausted, out of sorts, and made sure his eyes didn’t meet mine.  On the other hand, a new fella with interested eyes, Angelo, prayed to make Jesus his Lord, as did Jay, my young freckle-faced boy—so young he should not be on the street!   God is good, and he is yet faithful. 

Several waited to speak to me when I said ‘Amen’, closing our time together.  Two men asked me if there was any way I could bring them large-print Bibles next week.  Honestly, I had thought one guy was high--‘turns out he has glaucoma.  I thought I was doing better about forming judgments; I guess not.  By the way, just as an interesting note—in all the weeks I have been going there, not one soul has ever asked me for anything . . . except a Bible.

I walked outside, but I couldn’t let it go.  The sandwich crew had arrived, and honestly, it was a little like a Saturday Night Live skit because with all the craziness that goes on, the man who was praying loudly for the meal, well, he was praying in Korean.  Even though folks couldn’t understand him, most bowed their heads in respect anyway.  I found the Duke and sat down in someone’s temporarily-vacated seat. He didn’t say much, but then leaned across the table to a little white guy and said, ‘Guard my chair with your life…’ and then to me, ‘Can I talk to you?’ 

We walked outside, and he turned and said, ‘How did you know?’  ‘Know what?’  ‘That I am Desperado…you knew, didn’t you?’  I had used the Eagles song to illustrate that it was time to ‘come to their senses, stop riding fences,’ etc.  Before I answered, one of the regulars, Jackie, walked up to the Duke, pointed in his face and said, ‘God has a specific plan for you.’  I started to say something, but he silenced me with a huge hand on my shoulder. ‘You have an anointing on you,’ she said.  He looked long at her, rubbed his jawline, and said, ‘I receive that  . . . thank you,’ and shook her hand.  She moved on down the street with her scrawny little dog.  He turned and looked at me and said, ‘this stuff happens when you’re around.’

‘I dunno Kristeeen,’ he very deliberately said, ‘I’m different than other people.  I don’t think the same way.  And I don’t really trust people anymore…or God either.  I just can’t get hurt anymore.  Do you know that sometimes I sit down with people, and tourist types drive by, and take our picture—a picture of the homeless, like we’re a sick attraction . . . They don’t know I’m a military vet, they don’t know that others just fell through the cracks, that others are mentally ill, they don’t know… but it hurts. I can’t let them hurt me anymore.  If I were in Las Vegas and was going to put odds on it—I would say that things aren’t going to change for me. I won’t let myself trust . . . I gotta protect myself.’

What could I say to that?  After all, I was about to get in my SUV, make an illegal u-turn in the street, and drive south to my safe, comfortable little world.  I looked up at him and said, ‘I’m not going to give up, and neither is God.  I am going to pray against your odds, Duke.  God loves you.’

I drove home in silence.  All the noise was in my head.  I thought about whether or not I had failed, and came to the conclusion it wasn’t about me—it was the Holy Spirit and the Duke. Isaiah’s words, ‘God’s ways are higher than our ways,’ ran through my head.  And it was going to happen in God’s timing, not mine.  For with the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day.  Amen.

Christine

PastorWoman.com