Mr. Davis will not serve. I don’t mean in the military, I mean in the church. But he has a good reason, which I?ll explain later, but first, I need to tell you about bibles.
A few weeks ago, while doing our normal rounds of servitude, a young man walked through the parking lot we were ministering in. We quickly handed him a burrito, socks and water and asked how he was doing. After a lengthy conversation, Marc asked him if we brought him a bible would he read it. He said that he would so Marc promised to bring him a bible next time. You may be asking yourself “why not just give him a bible then and there?” That’s a good question (which is usually a fancy way of saying ” I don’t know”) but the problem is, we don’t typically carry extra bibles. We should, but we’ve been donating our extra bibles to www.FreeBibles.net lately. Don’t worry, I’ve remedied that problem when I bought 10 bibles with a gift card I had been needing to use.
True to his word, the young man was there waiting for us the following Thursday at the same location we meet him at before. Unfortunately, Marc was not with us this time. It’s not unusual for Marc to not come out, after all he is a single parent, but we still din’t have any bibles to give. So I explained the situation, gave him another burrito, socks and water and promised him “next week” once again.
Last week were down to only three again and this time I drove (I had the largest of 3 toyota pickups). Now this is one of those moments were you clearly see God’s hand involved in our efforts. We arrived at the same parking lot as before but we’re a few minites later than usual (15min) and I see the same young man walking off towards his “camp”. I honked my horn as we pulled in so he would come back and get a burrito, socks and water. Once stopped, I realize Marc is home being a good father and we still didn’t get any bibles to hand out yet! So after hooking him up with some food, I reached into my truck and grab my brand new compact bible I got for myself only a couple of weeks ago. I need to tell you, I really liked this bible. It was very compact (fits into any back pocket), was an English Standard Version translation (which I wanted to start using), was made very nicely and matched my wedding theme almost perfectly (I’m a newly wed still). Did I mention I really liked this bible?
After giving the bible to this young man and making sure the print wasn’t too small, I wished him well and let him go on his way as he doesn’t like to linger too much. It felt good to be able to help him get a bible, to fufill our promise and to make a little sacrafice for Christ. I knew God had placed me there with my truck so that I would be able to give that young man a bible, but I knew what we needed to do – get more bibles. The next week, we had ten new bibles to hand out if needed and we ended up giving away three. I was surprised but pleased. we didn’t push the bibles on anyone, they asked for them. Benny of all people just grabbed one out of my hand before even saying “hih” as if he were waiting for it. God is good.
I’ll have to tell you about Mr. Davis next time.
