12/17/12 Usabio about 30
I
was out at the park in a gospel conversation with a young man named Usabio(?), deep
into explaining about his accountability to God and need for forgiveness, when
suddenly a Canadian goose flew head-on into the chain-link fence of the tennis
court right next to us. We watched as he
stood up and kind of collected himself, then saw he was trapped in the tennis
court and frantically ran back and forth, trying to escape. I realized we would need to open one of the gates
in the fence and sort of herd him toward it, but suddenly two pit bulls came
out of nowhere and attacked him. Their
owners must not have realized the goose was inside the court and had let their
dogs loose to run, so they ran over and wrestled the dogs away from the
goose. By this time, I had run inside
the court, and was able to chase him out the gate and he flew away to
freedom. The interesting thing was,
after all this excitement, Usabio still wanted to pick up where we left off in
our conversation. He admitted to me that
he remembered that I had tried to talk with him about two years ago in that
same park, but he hadn’t been ready to have such a conversation at the
time. He felt bad about how he had
brushed me off, but now he was ready to talk.
Even so, today he was like so many relatively decent people, who are
positive and responsible and generally believe in God, but haven’t made any
effort to learn about the specifics of Christianity. He works as a technician in the emergency room
of a major Chicago hospital, and believes he does enough good to make up for
the “mistakes” he has made in life. Our
conversation today helped him see that these aren’t just “mistakes” but sins against God that he will
be accountable for, and that now, in this life, he needs to get into a right
relationship with God through faith in Jesus rather than just leaving it up to chance. When I first tried to talk with him two years
ago, I had accepted his refusal to talk with grace, trusting God’s timing. Would it have been better for me back then to
have insisted on talking, maybe even being rude or obnoxious about it? One can’t say for sure, but I kind of doubt
it. I’d rather leave the timing up to
God.
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