I couldn't remember the last time we had even seen each other, but learning that he had died shook me in a way I hadn't anticipated.
I believe that God has placed us where we are in order to impact people around us and show them Jesus. That said, there are certain people in my life that I am certain God has tasked to somebody else, because there's no way I'm ever going to get through to them. I want to tell you about two guys I met in university. We'll call them Bob and Terry, because those were their names. I met both of them on my first day of class in my first year. Bob had long, thick flowing hair and a moustache that couldn't seem to grow past the point of scraggly. Terry had a big giant poofy winter jacket that made a big shooping noise whenever he moved, so whenever he would arrive late for class, he would squeeze his way through an aisle until he got to the very middle, 'shooping' the whole way through. Social grace was a strange and foreign art to this guy. These were the people that God decided to bring into my life.
Terry was incredibly pretentious, and if he had been rich or impossibly handsome this would be understandable. Unfortunately, Terry was not quite rich and not quite impossibly handsome - to say the least - so when he would explain in detail the long list of requirements he expected of any woman that might one day wish to date him, I found myself wondering where on earth this dream girl was going to come from. Terry was the kind of guy that would loudly and directly address the professor in the middle of a 500-student classroom as he raised his hand. He was the kind of guy who would blame his poor exam mark on the ineptitude of the professor - with as many profanities as he could feasibly fit in one breath. He was the kind of guy I found myself trying to actively avoid. I was largely unsuccessful in my first year, but I figured when summer came I'd be free of him. But when I walked into the first class of my second year to find him sitting in the front row and loudly calling me to come sit next to him, I realized that he was going to be more difficult to evade than I had previously expected.
Bob wasn't as difficult for me to get along with, although the bulk of our conversations strayed towards philosophy that I didn't quite understand at times. The one advantage of that was that it was easy to have conversations about Jesus with him. He was always talking about the various perspectives on what our purpose in life was, so I had lots of opportunities to talk about my beliefs. That aside, Terry and I had practically nothing in common. Both he and Bob were people that I did not actively pursue time with.
At some point I thought about how God has called us to love others as ourselves, and I realized that I wasn't really doing this with Bob and Terry. The idea that God had brought me into these guy's lives to point them towards Christ was honestly not an inspiring thought for me. I just didn't like them that much. Couldn't somebody else witness to them?
I think this next part was really God smacking me in the back of the head. A few years ago, the power went out in the GTA a few days before Christmas. After trying to sleep a night at our place without heat, my family decided to pile into the car and move into my grandparent's house for a few nights. It was really nice because we were all together, warm, and celebrating the season together. It was Christmas Eve, and we were watching "A Christmas Carol" on the TV. And I got a call from Terry.
"Hey man," he said. "The power's still out at my place and I'm freezing. Can I come over?"
No part of me wanted to be the Good Samaritan. I wanted to be the priest who walked by on the other side of the road. I didn't want this guy who had poor taste in attire, morality, and humour to be with me on the most sacred night of the year.
"But it's Christmas," something inside me whispered.
I found myself typing that he was welcome to spend the night with us. Miraculously, he texted me back minutes later saying that a family member had come to pick him up and take him somewhere warm. It was like that moment where Abraham's about to sacrifice his son and an angel steps in the way. I had done the right thing, so I was being rewarded by not actually having to go through with it!
It wasn't that easy. He ended up coming over a day or two later and having dinner with my family and I. I won't get into the details of that dinner, but it was a real growing experience for me.
Time passed and I continued trying to be a good influence on these two guys that were now a part of my life. I met with Bob every once a month or so to talk about God, and Terry and I hung out occasionally as well. Bob was always so interested in how I tried living my life for God. He asked lots of questions and found the idea of a relationship with Jesus really fascinating. I had a feeling that I was making progress with Bob - that maybe in time he would accept Jesus to being a part of his life.
James 4:14 says, "Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away." One day, after a couple months of not seeing Bob, I got a message on Facebook from a guy I had met in my first year history class. He had just found out that Bob had died. He had no idea how it had happened, and Bob's family had been quiet about it, and there wasn't any information I could find on attending a funeral or anything like that. To this day I don't know what happened. It was really weird thinking that he had died. He was the same age as me. He probably had no idea that his time on earth was so limited. He was still in school, working towards a job that he'd never get.
Worst of all, I don't know where he is today. I have hope that before he died, he began some sort of a relationship with Jesus, but I don't know for sure. He might be experiencing an eternity apart from the creator of the universe. He might also be with his heavenly father. I have no way of knowing. The one thing that I'm thankful for is that while he was here, I told him about the love that I've found in Jesus. I got to tell him about how God came down and wrapped himself in mortal skin in order to unbind us from our sin. I know that Bob had a chance. And that gives me hope.
Terry and I had coffee a few days after we found out about Bob. When we met, Terry walked right into me with a hug, and the moment we sat down he started crying. He wondered if somehow it was his fault. I looked at Terry there, and I looked at him in a way I hadn't before. I realized that I was not promised another minute with this child of God. I thought I had so much time with Bob to lead him to Jesus, but I didn't. I looked at Terry and realized that I really had no idea how much time I had to lead him to Jesus. So I got right into it. I knew that Terry wasn't really ever crazy about talking about faith, so instead I asked him first about what Bob's purpose was while he was here, and if Terry thought that Bob had achieved it. I also asked Terry if he himself thought that he was fulfilling a purpose. After some more talking, I brought up afterlife and tried to linger there for a bit, but he wasn't really open to talking about that. At the end of the day, I had to accept that. All I could do was give Terry a chance.
Most of us - if not all of us - interact on a daily basis with people who have not encountered the love of God. We don't know how much time we have with them. All we know is that the time we do have with them is a chance to be a part of God's plan to unite them with Himself in eternity. Some of these people are people we like, and some of them aren't. Regardless of what you think of them, you may be the only person - even the last person - to ever get the chance to show them the love of Jesus. We have been given an opportunity, but we have not been told how long we have the opportunity. So we cannot afford to waste it.
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If you liked this, check out some of Matthew's other works.