That night, they led eighteen people to Christ.
Friday night, Sam showed up at the “Let Us Rejoice” party and congratulated all those he’d led to Christ. Modestly, he accepted words of praise for his good work from congregates who’d had several days to think about what he had done. He cried through the baptisms, but when they were finished and the party began, Sam grew restless. There were places he had to go, he thought, people he had to see. Needs he had to hear. He told Kate he was going to slip away, then quickly, he disappeared.
It was the Luke 15 kind of thing, he thought. He had to tear the house up and find that coin. He had to leave the ninety-nine sheep and look for the one. He had to scan the horizon for that lost son.
Tonight, something told him there would be lost sons coming in from out of town.
He drove to the bus station, where he had refused to go with John a few days earlier, and timidly, he walked in. There wasn’t a bus there, but several people in the lobby were waiting for one to arrive. He sat down on a bench next to a woman with a baby . . . and began to listen.
But instead of her voice, he heard the sound of his cell phone ringing. He had started carrying it in his pocket so that anyone he’d witnessed to who might have questions could get in touch with him night or day. Quickly, he pulled it out and answered.
“Sam, this is Bill. Where are you, man?”
He hesitated. Bill, who’d had little to do with him since the game, had been at the party when he’d left. “I’m at the bus station. Why?”
“Because I was just thinking,” he said. “Looking around at all these people who look so happy and thinking that never in a million years could I have led any of them to Christ . . .” His voice cracked. “Look, man. The Lord’s really been working on me since that game the other night, and I’m thinking that maybe I need to come and help you out.”
Sam got slowly to his feet. “Really?”
“Yeah. You got enough to go around? Because Jeff and Steve are standing here with me, and they’d kind of like to come too.”
Sam threw his head back and laughed out loud. This was too good to be true. “There’s a bus due in twenty minutes,” he said. “There’ll be plenty for all of us.”
“All right, stay put. We’re on our way.”
A tear rolled down Sam’s face as he dropped his phone back into his pocket.
12
Kate was already home when Sam returned that night, and he came in and called out for her. She rushed into the room, her hands on her hips. “How many?” she asked with a grin.
He shrugged. “I can’t even say. Some of them listened. Some didn’t. But the main thing is that Bill and Jeff and Steve got initiated into the harvest.”
“I know!” She clasped her hands and did a little dance. “I couldn’t believe it when they told me where they were going. Did they have any success?”
“Each of them led at least two people. It was phenomenal. They were practically jumping up and down. You should have seen it. And then I gave Bill a ride home, and all the way he kept thinking of different people he was gonna tell tomorrow. I think it’s gotten into his blood now. There’s no turning back.”
Kate squealed and threw her arms around him. “You know, I have never been so proud of you as I have these last two weeks.”
“Well, I’m pretty proud of you too.”
“Don’t be. I haven’t done nearly what you’ve done.”
“Well, like you said the other day, I have an edge.”
She sat down, and he told her about some of the people he’d met, their needs, the ways he’d answered them. They laughed and wept and prayed together.
Later, when she went to bed, Sam stayed up. He was too energized to sleep, and he wanted to spend some time with the Lord. Humbly, he got down on his knees and thanked God for the blessing of ears with which to hear, for the needs he was able to fulfill, for the heart of flesh that had replaced his own heart of stone. And then he thanked God for the soul-winners he was raising up among Sam’s friends and his brothers and sisters in Christ, and among the babes in Christ who had new stories to tell and new circles of friends who needed to hear.
Then he sank down in his recliner, opened his Bible, and began studying the Scripture. There was so much he had to learn, he thought. His soul soaked up all he read, digesting everything he saw.
Hours later, he fell asleep with the Bible in his lap.
And again, he began to dream . . .
13
He dreamed of that lost coin, but this time he was the one searching his house, looking under things and on top of things. And then he heard that divine, powerful voice that he’d heard almost two weeks earlier. But the words were different.
“And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.”
He jolted awake and realized he had fallen asleep in the recliner with his Bible in his lap. He felt as touched by God as he had that first night when he’d wakened in a cold sweat with his hands trembling and his heart pounding. Breathless, he got up and went into the bedroom. Kate was still asleep. He didn’t want to wake her, because he didn’t know what to say.
Finally, he stepped into the shower and let the water cool and calm him as it rained down on him. When he came out, Kate stirred and looked at the clock. It was 5:00 A.M. “Did you ever come to bed last night?” she asked in a groggy voice.
“No, I fell asleep in the chair,” he said quietly. He pulled on his robe and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Kate, I had another dream. I heard God talking to me again.”
Kate sat up in bed, her eyes squinted. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.’”
“Well, that’s a nice thought. Right out of the Bible. Jesus said it after he gave the Great Commission.”
“Yeah, but why did I dream it?”
“Maybe to remind you of the Great Commission he gave you?”
Sam thought that over as he got dressed and headed early to the diner for breakfast. Since it was Saturday, he left Kate to go back to sleep.
Sam parked in front of the diner and went in. He scanned the patrons as he walked to the counter. Some of them were people he had talked to over the last two weeks. Some of them had prayed with him. Some had even come to his church and the “Let Us Rejoice” party the night before. They looked up at him and smiled, and he gave a cursory wave and went to his usual stool at the counter.
He sat down and glanced to his side, smiled and nodded at the elderly woman next to him.
Janie came up. “Hi, Sam. Ready for the usual?”
“Thanks, Janie.”
As she scurried away to get his breakfast, it dawned on him that he hadn’t heard any voices yet. He sat up straighter on his stool and swiveled around, looking one by one into the faces of the people closest to him. Normally, he would have heard three or four by now. But even the woman right next to him remained silent. He leaned closer to her and tried to listen. But nothing came. She was eating her bacon, nibbling on a piece of toast, and there weren’t any words coming out of her heart or her mouth.
Janie came back and put the plate on the counter in front of him. He looked up into her eyes, frantically listening, trying to hear.
“What is it, Sam?” she asked.
He shook his head. “Something’s different.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.” He got up and started backing out. “Uh, look. I can’t eat right now.” He threw a five-dollar bill down on the counter. “Maybe I’ll come back in a little bit.”
She nodded with confusion, and he bolted out of the diner and onto the sidewalk. A group of Girl Scouts passed by with boxes of cookies. Out here, when people passed him, he used to hear souls crying out their deepest needs. Now he heard nothing except the sounds of car engines going by, an occasional horn, voices from people chattering as they passed. But not the needs. Not those deep needs that stirred his heart.
Almost frantic with the
fear that the gift was gone, he went to his car and drove to the bus station. There he would be able to tell if he had really lost his gift, he thought. There, where needs ran rampant and people were in turmoil. In the middle of a crowd, he would be able to tell.
He got there just as a bus was pulling in to let people out. It had been driving all night, he supposed, and the people were tired. They looked rumpled and wrinkled as they disembarked. He bypassed the terminal and headed straight for the bus. One by one the passengers got off, and he tried to hear.
But there was nothing. The gift was gone.
Tears burst into his eyes, and suddenly, he felt helpless, insignificant. Useless.
He ran back to his car. Where he would go, he wasn’t sure, but he had to do something, he thought. John, his pastor, came to mind as it had on that first day. If anyone could help him, John could. So Sam pulled out and headed to John’s home.
14
John was sitting at his desk in his study, hunched over his Bible, when his wife let Sam in. Sam was as shaken as he’d been that first morning. He was drenched in sweat, breathing hard, and pushing trembling hands through his hair. “John, you’ve got to help me.”
John looked alarmed. “Sam, are you okay?”
“It’s gone!” he cried. “It’s all gone!”
“What is?”
“The gift.”
John got slowly to his feet. “How do you know?”
“I had another dream last night,” Sam ranted. “When I woke up, I felt like something was different, and when I went to the diner, I couldn’t hear the voices. I can’t hear them anywhere, even at the bus station.”
John’s face went slack, and Sam realized how much of his hopes John had been pinning on Sam’s gift. “Maybe it’s just fading,” John said. “Maybe it’ll come back.”
“No.” Sam sat down and shook his head. “I just know that it’s gone. I think I knew on some level when I woke up this morning. After that dream . . .”
John took the seat next to him and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Tell me about that dream,” he said. “Sam, what happened in this one?”
“It was about the lost coin again,” he said. “This time it was my coin, and I was looking instead of just watching someone else look. And then God spoke to me.”
“What did he say this time?”
Sam hadn’t thought about it since he’d told Kate earlier. He closed his eyes and tried to remember. “He said, ‘And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.’”
John sat back in his chair. “That’s the last verse in the Gospel of Matthew. The last words Matthew recorded before Jesus ascended.”
“Why would he say that to me?” Sam asked. “What does it mean?”
“Just what it says, I’d imagine.” He stared at Sam for a long moment. “Sam, are you sure it’s gone?”
“Gone,” he said. “I’ve tried. I can’t hear a thing. Just normal voices. Just what you hear.”
He saw that John was struggling to hide the disappointment on his face. “I had kind of counted on it staying. I mean, I don’t know what I was thinking,” John said. “Guess I was exploiting you in some ways.”
“That was fine,” Sam said. “After I got a taste of it, I wanted to be exploited. God gave me the gift for a reason.”
John walked wearily back around his desk and dropped into his chair. “I really don’t know what to think, Sam. Sometimes when I’m at a loss, the best thing to do is pray. Let’s pray.”
Sam gratefully hunched over, and as they began to pray, he felt a sadness fall over him. He knew with a certainty that the gift would not return. The Lord had given it, and he had taken it away. When they’d said “amen,” John looked up at him, thoughts passing like shadows through his own eyes.
“Maybe the gift was just for a season, Sam. Let’s not look at the removal of it as something to grieve about. Let’s remember the joy while you had it. Maybe it was just to give you a glimpse of the urgency of the harvest.”
“Maybe so,” Sam said. “But it doesn’t make it any easier.” His mouth twisted as he tried not to cry, and he covered his face. “I was getting used to winning people to Christ. The confidence I had when I could just walk up to someone and know what their needs were. Hear inside them, just like the Lord does. What am I gonna do now?”
“You don’t have to quit,” John said. “You can still tell people about Jesus, just the way I do, and everybody else you taught does.”
“No,” Sam said. “I can’t do it without that gift.”
John got up, came closer, and touched Sam’s shoulder. “Go home and pray some more about this,” he said. “Ask the Lord to show you what to do. He will. That’s what his words were about, Sam. He hasn’t left you. He’s going to be right there with you.”
But as Sam headed back out to his car, he felt very much alone.
15
Sam didn’t make any stops on the way home. He pulled into the garage and quickly closed the door behind him, as if it could keep him from having to encounter anyone whose needs he couldn’t hear. He went into the house and saw that Kate was up and dressed. She smiled hopefully at him.
“Where ya been?”
“I just went to the diner to eat,” he said.
She grinned. “How many?”
Tears sprang to his eyes, and he shook his head and headed toward the living room where he dropped into his recliner. Kate followed, the smile on her face fading. “What’s the matter, Sam?”
“It’s gone,” he said. “I can’t do it anymore.”
“Do what?”
“I can’t hear,” he said. “The gift is all gone. I went everywhere. I went to the diner; I went out on the street; I went to the bus station. I can’t hear it anymore!”
Kate stood there a moment, dumbfounded. Then, frowning, she asked, “Didn’t you say you had a dream last night?”
“Yes,” he said. “It must have been God’s way of telling me it was over.”
“Wow.” She sank down onto the couch. “So . . . what are you gonna do?”
“Nothing. What can I do? I’m useless.”
She thought about that for a moment, then stood back up. “Wait a minute. I’m not useless, and I haven’t been able to hear anybody’s spiritual needs.”
“That’s true,” he said, “but you knew what I could hear. We were a team—I gave you information. But I can’t do it anymore.”
“No,” she said. “That was true of the first few, but after that I got a little more confident. You weren’t involved in every single one. Some of them I talked to without you.”
“But let’s face it,” he said. “We both had this false sense of security that I could read their thoughts and know what they were feeling.”
The telephone rang, and Kate stared at Sam for a moment, obviously processing his words. He could see that she was going to protest again, but instead, she picked up the phone. “Hello? Yeah, he’s here. Just a minute.” She held the phone out to Sam. “It’s Steve.”
“I don’t want to talk to him. I’m too strung out here.”
“He already knows you’re here,” she whispered.
Sighing heavily, Sam grabbed the phone. “Hello.”
“Sam, it’s Steve. Listen, Joan and I went to the mall this morning, and there was this old man who’d been sitting on a bench all by himself, and I finally got up the nerve to approach him and start a conversation, and you’re not gonna believe what happened.”
“What?”
“He accepted Christ. He’s gonna come to church in the morning.”
Sam closed his eyes and smiled faintly. “That’s good, Steve. That’s great.”
“And I was just wondering, if you’re not doing anything, why don’t you come on over here? I’m gonna be here for a while. There are people everywhere. I thought you and I could—”
“No,” Sam cut in. “I can’t.”
“Oh.” Steve sounded a little surprised. “Well, okay, that’s fine, if you
have another commitment.”
Sam shook his head. “Not another commitment, Steve. It’s not that. It’s just that—” He glanced up at Kate. Their eyes locked. He knew she was waiting to see what he was going to tell him. “It’s just that I’m not feeling very well. I kind of have a . . . an ear problem.”
“That doesn’t sound good. Well, don’t worry about it, then. I’ll just work on my courage. You know, I’m counting on having a ‘Let Us Rejoice’ party every Friday night.”
Sam frowned. He couldn’t see it happening. Not now, not without his gift. Things had changed.
“I’ll just call Bill and Jeff and see if they want to come. They had a blast last night. It was like they suddenly discovered a talent they didn’t know they had. Listen, you take care, okay? Hope you’re feeling better by tomorrow.”
Sam hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment.
“Steve asked you to go with him to tell people about Jesus, and you turned him down?”
“Kate, didn’t you hear me? It’s over!”
The doorbell rang, and Kate headed for it. Moments later, John was in the doorway. “He lost the gift,” Kate was telling him, and John was nodding.
“I know. He came by the house and told me this morning.”
Sam began to rub his temples, but John came farther into the room and sat down opposite him. “You won’t believe this.”
“Tell me,” Sam said, not very enthusiastically.
John leaned his elbows on his knees. “I’ve been getting calls this morning from some of the people in the evangelism class. The party last night got them all excited, and they’re starting to feel more confident. They want to go out and talk to people after class tomorrow afternoon. Bill and Steve and Jeff told me to sign them up last night. I just wanted to let you know. I thought that might cheer you up, since you started all this.”