There was so much he needed to know, he thought. So much that still eluded him about Christ. People would ask. He needed to be prepared. He wished he’d memorized more Scripture. He wished he’d hidden it in his heart.
A new hunger to know the Word overwhelmed him, and he began to read, marking passages and writing in the margins, trying to commit verses to memory. He didn’t notice as the employees began to fill the building and the work day officially began. So when someone knocked on his door, he was startled. He looked up and saw his boss, Rob Simpson, with one of his biggest advertising clients standing behind him.
“Sam, I thought you might like to know that Mr. Hagle is here.”
Sam got up and came around the desk, extending his hand. “Mr. Hagle, it’s great to see you.”
“Sorry I missed you yesterday,” the man said. “I took Rob to lunch.”
“I wasn’t feeling well,” Sam said. “Long story, but I’m better today.”
The man glanced at Sam’s desk. “What’s that you’re reading?”
“The Bible,” Sam said. He looked at his clock and realized eight o’clock had come and gone. “Guess it’s time to be putting that up.”
He heard a voice coming from the client, though his lips only moved in small talk. “I wish there was something in there for me. Light at the end of my tunnel.”
Sam seized the opportunity to pounce before he could lose his nerve. “You know, Mr. Hagle, I don’t know if you’ve ever read the Bible. If you haven’t, you ought to give it a try. It sure does add light to the end of a long, dark tunnel.”
The man’s face changed. Frowning, he locked eyes with Sam. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
Sam nodded. Rob hurried the client out of the room, and Sam stepped into the doorway and watched until they’d turned the corner. Sam went back to his desk, closed his Bible, and put it away. He began working on the account that was sitting on his desk, calling for his attention. After a few moments, the phone buzzed. He picked it up. “Sam Bennett.”
“Sam, this is Rob. I want to see you in my office. Now.”
Sam closed his eyes. Maybe he had made a mistake mentioning the Bible and his faith to a client. Was Rob about to chew him out? He hurried to his boss’s office and knocked on the door. He heard a gruff, “Come in.”
Slowly, he walked inside. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yeah, I wanted to see you,” Rob said, leaning back in his chair. “I want to talk to you about what just happened.”
“What did just happen?” Sam asked, taking the chair across from his desk.
“I bring a client by your office, and you’re sitting there reading the Bible, of all things. And as if that isn’t bad enough, you have the gall to start telling him that he needs to be reading it.” Rob got to his feet and began pacing back and forth across the office. “How do you think that makes the company look? How much faith do you think that man’s going to put in us, when he sees you soaking up a bunch of superstitious philosophies and telling him he needs to do it?”
Heat rushed to Sam’s face. “Look, Rob, I didn’t know you were coming to my office. I came in here early this morning and started reading. The time got away from me.”
“You were reading it on our time,” Rob said. “It wasn’t your time—it was our time. You never know when a client’s going to stop by. You can’t let them catch you doing something so stupid—”
“It was not stupid,” Sam said, springing to his feet. “That is God’s Word, not some stupid, superstitious philosophy, as you refer to it.” It was the first time he’d lost his temper with his boss, and he knew he was getting dangerously close to losing his job.
Then he heard the voice, coming from Rob’s soul, deep within him, too loud to ignore. “I can’t stand my life anymore.”
The words stopped Sam cold.
“My tunnel’s so dark and so long that it’s already swallowed up all the light.”
Sam’s anger vanished, and he looked into his boss’s eyes and felt a compassion that he hadn’t felt before. “Rob, the light can’t be swallowed up.”
Rob shot him a disgusted look. “What are you talking about? What light?”
“The light at the end of the tunnel,” he said. “The darkness is never gonna swallow the light, because it’s God’s light and it’s there, in his Word.”
“It’s a book!” he yelled. “Just words on a piece of paper, and I don’t want it in my company. I will not have it ruining the credibility that we have with our clients. Either you get that through your head or you pack up your office and get out of here.”
Sam realized that his boss was hurting. Something was going on in his life, and since he couldn’t read his thoughts, but only the general emptiness of his spirit, he didn’t have a clue what it could be. He grabbed a pad from Rob’s desk and began to write.
“What are you doing?” Rob demanded.
Sam tore the page off and handed it to Rob. “This is my home number. I want you to call me any time you want to talk. I mean any time, night or day. Two in the morning. I don’t care.”
“Why would I call you in the middle of the night?”
Sam shrugged. “I don’t know. I get the feeling that you need to talk.”
“I’m talking right now! I told you to pack up the Bible or pack up your things!”
“I know,” he said, “but I’m serious. If you need to talk, call me. Or you could come to church Sunday. I go to Church of the Savior on Post Road. Come and hear more about . . .”
“Get out of my office!”
“All right, Rob. I’m sorry I got you riled up.” Before Rob could respond, Sam headed back to his office and closed himself in. He went back to his desk. They could keep him from reading his Bible on company time, he thought, but they couldn’t keep him from praying. Quietly, he began to pray for Rob and the spiritual need he’d heard in his soul. As he did, he had a sense of peace, that God was working on Rob just as he’d once worked on Sam.
11
FOR THE REST OF THE WEEK, SAM REVELED IN HIS GIFT.
He began to look forward to hearing the voices of the souls in the places he went. He even sought out crowds so that he could have access to more and more people. Kate, too, caught the zeal and began to rush home after work so they could go out to eat and find people to talk to.
When Sally, his secretary, didn’t win the lottery, she failed to come to work for several days. Concerned about her, he finally paid her a visit.
As he stood on her porch next to the plants that needed watering, waiting for her to answer, he hoped that his gift hadn’t been responsible for her withdrawal. He never should have repeated those numbers back to her. If he hadn’t, maybe she wouldn’t have put so much hope in the numbers being God’s gift.
The door squeaked open, and Sally peeked out. Her eyes were red and swollen. “Sam?”
“Sally, are you okay?” Sam asked.
She nodded and swiped at her nose with a tissue.
“Can I come in?” She hesitated for a moment, then reluctantly stepped back to let him in.
“I wasn’t expecting company,” she said, “now that I’m not a millionaire.” She said the words as if she’d been robbed of her fortune and all her friends had fled.
“It’s fine,” he said, stepping over wadded tissues on the carpet. Boxes of items cluttered the floor—a computer, a new television, a stereo system. Sam looked around and wondered if she had charged them on her credit card, planning to pay them off when her lottery numbers were chosen. The room was dark, as if she had been sitting there, crying and staring at the things she had coveted.
“I had so many affirmations,” she said in a hoarse, stopped-up voice as she dropped miserably onto her sofa. “You even repeated the numbers I had in my head. How could that be if they weren’t the right numbers?”
Sam realized he had unintentionally led her down the wrong path. He had almost used his gift to go that way himself. “I didn’t know the numbers, Sally,” he said. “How coul
d I know?”
“But you said them!”
“I just had this feeling . . . about your spiritual condition. That your self-worth was somehow tied up in this lottery. That maybe I was even one of the people you wanted to show your true worth to.”
She grabbed another Kleenex and blew her nose. “If I had become a multimillionaire, we’d see who was superior then.”
“Why do you want to be superior?”
“Because I’m tired of being inferior. Equal would have even been good. But now I’m still just a peon.”
“You’ve never been a peon, Sally. I couldn’t get any of my work done without you.”
“You’d hire another secretary in ten minutes flat. I wouldn’t even be a fond memory.” She began to cry again on the last words and pressed the wadded tissue to her eyes.
“Sally, you don’t seem to know how much you mean to God.”
“God?” she asked. “What’s this got to do with God?”
“God cares more about you than he does some lottery ticket.”
“Obviously he cares nothing about my lottery ticket. Not a thing. Less than nothing!”
“But you’re not listening. He cares about you. And he knows you’re worth a whole lot more than money. You’re worth everything he had to give—Jesus gave his life for you.”
“Oh, don’t give me that,” she bit out. “I know all about the cross. I was raised in church. I’m there every time the doors open. I teach Sunday school. I take food to poor families at Thanksgiving. I know more than you do about Jesus!”
“But knowing about Jesus doesn’t do you much good, Sally. The Bible says that you have to ‘confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and you will be saved.’ If you believe in your heart that God did that, Sally, then why can’t you trust him with your finances? Why can’t you believe that you’re worth a lot more than money?”
“Well . . . I do believe that . . . I do.”
But Sam could hear her soul, and he knew she didn’t really believe it. Not in her heart. They were just words to her, words she’d heard over and over throughout her life. Words that had little meaning to her. In her heart, where it counted, she didn’t really believe.
“I just . . . wanted to be rich. If God loved me so much, he would want me to be rich too.”
“What makes you think that God’s business is making his people rich? Maybe he needs you to stay in the middle class for some higher purpose. Maybe he even needs you poor, so he can use you a certain way. His children have a much higher value than dollars and cents. He has a plan for you that’s better than any winning lottery ticket.”
She was getting angrier. “If you weren’t my boss . . .”
“What? What if I weren’t your boss?” Sam waited.
She threw her chin up. “If you weren’t my boss, I’d grab you by the throat and throw you out of my house!”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because you’ve got a lot of nerve, preaching to me. I’m one of the pillars of my church. I don’t need you coming in here telling me about Jesus in my time of grief.”
Sam got up, his hands innocently outstretched. “I’ve offended you—I didn’t mean to do that. I just thought you should know that Jesus cares about you.”
“I do know. I guess you’re gonna fire me now. Kick me while I’m down!”
“No, I’m not going to fire you,” he said. “I’m going to pray for you. That you’ll understand how precious you are to God.”
“I’ll show you,” she said. “I’ll show you all. I’ll win that lottery next week. If I buy enough tickets, I’m sure to win one of these times. I’m not one to give up this easy!”
Sam left her house and got back into his car, feeling sick that he hadn’t been able to do better than that. This is hard, he thought. He closed his eyes and dropped his forehead onto the steering wheel. “Lord, please help Sally. My coming to see her was not enough. You’ve got to draw her to you. I can’t do any of this by myself. Without you there with me, my words are empty. Useless.”
When he started his car and looked back up at her door, he had tears in his eyes. Humbled, he drove off, aware more than ever that this gift had its limitations.
But Sam didn’t let his visit with Sally stop him and decided to depend more than ever on the Holy Spirit to lead him. He lost count of the number of people he led to Christ, as well as the number who rejected him outright. The more he told, the more he wanted to tell, and the greater the urgency in his soul grew.
He couldn’t wait until Sunday so he could try to appeal to some of his Christian friends at church to get out there with him. He had been praying earnestly and diligently about it, as Kate had, and he had faith that the Lord would provide helpers for the harvest.
Sunday morning, he and Kate went to the Waffle House for breakfast and shared the gospel with an old man who was sitting there alone. It almost made them late for church, but they pulled into the parking lot just as the organ music began to play. Sam hurried into the foyer, then through the double doors into the sanctuary.
And he stopped cold. The church was packed. He realized he had never seen it this full since they’d completed the new building three years earlier, not even on Easter. They had built it hoping for church growth, but the numbers had declined since that time. Today, however, every pew was full, and folding chairs had been brought in at the back. Even the balconies had people in them.
He looked at Kate and saw that her eyes were glowing. Taking her hand, he slipped into a back pew as the congregation rose and began to sing. The pastor stood at the front of the room, beaming with excitement and joy. Sam looked around him as they sang. There, across the room, he saw Janie, the waitress, with her sister who had accepted Christ a few days before. Down the row was her son with two of his friends.
Kate nudged him and he followed her gaze across the aisle. It was the woman she’d spoken with at the ball game the other night. Two rows in front of her was one of the people he’d met at a convenience store. His eyes scanned the crowd, and up toward the front he saw Sid Beautral, from the hospital, and his wife. The man looked weak, but his face was full of joy.
When the praise time ended, John began to preach the sermon that was so much like the previous Sunday’s. But last Sunday no one had heard. He talked about Luke 15 again, about the lost coin and the lost sheep and the lost son—he said that they were all things that others might have shrugged off as insignificant, but Jesus saw them as important enough to stop everything to seek them. As John preached, Sam prayed silently that the other Christians in the room would hear and respond, that their hearts would be opened to their true potential—reaching a lost world.
“I’m going to do something different today,” John said. “I can’t help thinking that some of you here would like to profess God before men. We’re going to have an altar call, and I want you to come if you feel convicted to share what Christ is doing in your life.” This time, Sam didn’t check his watch as he had the week before. Instead, he continued to pray, not caring if anyone saw his eyes closed.
Kate nudged him again, and he looked up. A crowd was forming at the front of the room as the people sang on. He strained his neck to see who had gone forward. He saw Janie and her sister and her son, the lady at the ball game, Sid Beautral, and countless others they had met that week.
His eyes began to fill, and he covered his mouth and began to weep. Kate was already crying as if her heart was broken, but he knew the joy that bubbled in her soul as she clung to him. As the music leader led them in another verse, he hoped they wouldn’t end the altar call yet. There were others, he knew, more of them who needed to make commitments. They needed another verse. Another song. Another hour. He sang clear and loud, his voice reaching out a prayer of thanks and supplication to his Father.
And then he saw another man slip out of the aisle and head down to the front.
“Anyone you know?” Kate whispered.
 
; He wiped the tears from his face and narrowed his eyes to see through the blur. As the man turned to the side to whisper to John, Sam realized who it was. “That’s Rob. My boss.”
Kate stood on her toes to see over the heads. As Rob began to weep, head to head with John, Sam had to restrain himself from leaping forward and running down the aisle himself. Then another came, and another, and at last, he realized that almost as many heard the gospel from Kate as from him or John. People began moving from the front pews to make room for those who had come down. It was a marvel he hadn’t been prepared for.
When John was satisfied that no one else was going to come, he nodded to the minister of music and they closed the song. Finally, when the music had stopped, John went back to the pulpit with a tear-stained face.
“Brothers and sisters,” he said in a voice full of emotion, “I want to introduce some people to you. They’ve each accepted Christ this week, and the story is the same over and over. A handful of these I spoke with, but the rest of them were led to Christ and invited here by either Sam Bennett or his wife, Kate.”
Sam hadn’t expected to be mentioned, and as heads turned and people sought him out, he looked at the floor, unable to meet their eyes. He didn’t want the recognition, he thought. He just wanted help from other Christians.
“Sam?” John said from the pulpit.
Sam looked up.
“Would you come up here for a minute, please?”
Sam had no idea what John wanted him to do, but he got up, wiped his face, and walked the aisle. He went up to the pulpit and stood next to John, his face wet with his tears.
“Something’s happened to Sam this week,” John said. “This past week, he started listening to people’s needs. One by one, he and Kate led these people here today. But they need help. I want to ask you, those of you who want to be like Sam, who want to help change people’s lives, come to my class today at 4:00. Let’s learn some Scripture you can use when sharing your faith, talk about ways to seek out the people who need to hear. Let’s figure out how we can tap into Christ’s vine to make our own branches bear fruit. And please come up and welcome our new brothers and sisters.”