A couple weeks ago on Sunday night, Harold told us his story.
Yes, he would like something to eat. Yes, he wanted to pray.
“Prayer is powerful. It really is powerful, I have to tell you,” he told us, quietly and earnestly.
Harold is a Vietnam Vet who walks with a cane and who was on the ground in the war. He said he realized that the men in the tunnels that he was assigned to were just people, people who had families, and that understanding caused him great pain. He said he had best friends in the war who came back and had such trauma that one hanged himself and another killed himself in another way. The after-effects of the war were profound and distressing.
Harold told us that he knows Jesus and that Jesus cured him of addiction after many years of it and healed him from the trauma of the war. He said that we didn’t need to pray about his healing right then because Jesus had already taken care of him in that way.
What he wanted to tell us was that he was praying to go back home out west. It was time to see family and friends and to face some health concerns. And so, he had been praying to Jesus that he could save more than $100 to buy a bus ticket.
Then, earlier on the day that we met him, a man walked up to him where he was sitting and said, “God just told me to buy you a bus ticket.”
The man was a businessman and said he wasn’t religious. He just knew that God had told him to buy a bus ticket for Harold, whom he didn’t know and hadn’t met, and he couldn’t shake it. And so he did. He walked up to Harold and bought him the ticket, at a price that would have been exorbitant for a homeless man.
So now Harold was simply waiting until Tuesday to go home to the Midwest.
We gave him something to eat. And we prayed with him, joyfully.
We know it was a glorious homecoming for you, Harold. And we’re asking for glorious homecomings, of many kinds, for so many people!
We’re still praying for Harold. And thanking God for his glorious gifts to all of His people. All the honor and all the praise and all the glory go to God.
In Your Name, Jesus, we pray. Amen.
~ Julie