They get it

Talk around The Lord's Rain yesterday spent some time not on how the Canucks would do against the Kings that night, but on the volcanic eruption in Iceland. And since Danilo is from Nicaragua, which has seen more than a few devastating earthquakes, people also noted the 'quakes in Chile and Haiti and did the math.


"This is It, isn't it?" said Cindy. "This is all part of The End."

I affirmed it for her: it's exactly what Jesus told us would happen. And we have to remember what He told us to do: get ready and help others to get ready.

I looked around the place. There was no one in that room that I would have called "stupid". Addicts, down-and-out, mentally ill, whatever ... hardly urbane sophisticates ... but stupid? Not even in that ballpark.

But they get it: they see what's going on and if they're not altogether sure how to handle it, they have an idea where to turn (coming into The Lord's Rain is a good idea, right there). Some of them are starting to realize that there is a way to face these things Jesus warned us about without being fearful.

Come to think of it, isn't that usually the way with people who "get it"? Peter and John were "unlearned men", all the Apostles were generally rough-edged characters except for Paul, and he was a very poor speaker. Moses stammered. Jesus was the carpenter's kid.

Need I go on?

Cindy's story Pt 1

There have been some people who come into The Lord's Rain who make me cringe. They're an attitude on two legs, constantly demanding things we don't have or things we won't give (one guy came in four days in a row for a pair of gloves and after we cut him off on day 2, he actually bulled his way behind the desk to get another pair -- kind of like a cat that knows there's a piece of salmon somewhere in that bag; I've stopped being astonished at the brazenness - I just say, "gerrahtavit!" and physically remove the person). Recently, I wrote about Cherie and I think I've mentioned Nelson, one who asked for prayer, and about whom Shannon said, "that guy positively glowed when you prayed for him!"

Cindy is another such person. A year ago, I suspected she was shooting-up in one of the showers, so I called the ambulance. As we continued to yell at her to come out of the shower, she suddenly burst out, stark naked, asking if we were satisfied yet - she'd come out. She got dressed and stumbled out and when police caught up with her, she was weaving into traffic on Hastings in her sock feet.

But in the past four months, she's been coming back to The Lord's Rain - and a very changed person, to boot. Since we "formally introduced" each other, she's never failed to call me by name; she always says "please" and "thank you" and has a pleasant greeting for us when she comes in.

Yesterday, she said, "does God talk to you?"

"Oh, yes."

"Does He ever tell you to do things you really don't want to do?"

"Oh- yeah!" and I told her one of my experiences. "What about you?"

"I think so. I think He's told me to minister to other people. I'm scared to do that."

"Who isn't? But you know: He'll never give you more than you can handle. You might take on more than you can handle, but He won't give it to you; so keep listening and know that He'll give you the strength you need."

"Just baby steps," John put in. "One leads to another and then another ..."

"And you'll be surprised how easy it is, once you take that first step."

So we prayed for strength for her, and the conversation took a different tack. She talked a bit about how her mother had raised her with a bit of knowledge of the Bible and how even in her addiction, if she did something wrong, her conscience wouldn't give her peace until she'd made it right. She told us she'd had a baby, but had given it up for adoption, and how she felt for the single mothers on the Downtown East Side.

She held up a Christian magazine we had there. "Can I take this with me?" "Sure," I said. "I haven't been able to read because of my addiction," she went on. "The other day, I found a Spanish Bible in the bushes by the park. Just having it with me, I felt changes inside. Then I met a single mom who reads Spanish, so I gave it to her."

"You see what happened?" I said, "God's already got you ministering to someone."

She told me she had a tattered Bible of her own at home. "This woman down the hall knocked on my door the other night and asked if I had a pipe and a lighter. I said no, but she came in and started breaking up her dope to share it. She was doing it right over my Bible -- using it like a table -- and something inside me said, 'isn't anything sacred to you?' So I said, 'don't do your dope over that! That's a Bible!' And then she said, 'well, I guess I can't share my dope with you if you don't have a pipe and a lighter.' and she went out. There was a time I'd've gone crazy -- run after her, or go out and do anything to get a hit. But that time - I just knew I had to take a stand: something had to be sacred to me."

There are others now -- and will be more in the future -- who make me cringe when I see them -- as Cindy did up till six months ago, but seeing the changes in Cindy show that transformation is possible, with sufficient prayer and patience. In June, it will be six years since I first started ministering at Rainbow Mission, and while I went down hoping to see an Azusa Street-type revival, I know now that if I'd actually expected that, I'd have been out of there long ago. And if it had happened, I probably would have been out of there long ago, too, taking credit as the "catalyst" for the revival. But the changes that we are seeing in people's lives over time are truly God At Work ... and you know they're real and lasting.

Pastor Cal Weber at Westpointe Christian Centre had an interesting analogy recently: he said that water running over a rock has the same effect as a hammer -- it just takes longer. (It also does a more complete job, eventually reducing that rock to sand, when someone using a hammer might be satisfied with just having a bunch of smaller rocks. Sand, you can re-shape in any way you like; small rocks -- not so easy.)

That would be why the whole concept of The Lord's Rain involves running water.