My V.A. Moment

I recently went to the V.A. hospital in St. Louis for my six-month checkup. You may hear horror stories about the care at V.A. hospitals but my experience there has been very positive. The doctors I have met have been very caring and personally interested in keeping me well. The accessory personnel that I have dealt with have been cordial and helpful.

On this last visit, I signed in and went to wait in the reception area. The seats in the main reception area were mostly taken so I sat down on a bench in the hall outside the area where I could still hear my name called. Near me on the same bench was a young, good looking blond man with his head down in apparent thought.

All of a sudden, without looking at me, he said, “I’m dying!”

Almost instantly, three words came out of my mouth, “So am I!” I hadn’t thought about it; I hadn’t planned on saying such a thing – I just said it.

The young man looked up at me and said, “You are?”

I continued, “Yes. Here I am, seventy-five years old, and there you are, probably about thirty years old – and we’re both dying. The only difference is that you have more information about “when” than I do.”

He was quiet for a moment and then replied, “Yes, I guess you’re right.”

I surmised that this man was not taking his immanent death very well. I decided to talk about God to him. I have only done this with strangers a couple of times in my life – I tend toward an introvert personality.

I said, “What do you think about God?”

He replied, “I don’t know much.”

I said, “Have you ever looked around you at the beauty and complexity of nature and thought there must be a Creator?”

He said, “Yeah, I guess so.”

I continued, “Well, human beings are the height of God’s creation and God has made special provision for us to continue on in life after death. You may be unsure and even fearful of what happens at your death, but you don’t have to be!”

Wow! I couldn’t believe how I was speaking to a stranger!

I went boldly on, “God loves you and God loves me, no matter what in the world we have done. And because of that great love, He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, as a Savior for us to make payment by His death for all the wrong things we have done, you and I.”

The man said, “Yeah, I know about Christianity and, from what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of phoniness there.”

I said, “You are right! But that doesn’t make the true message of Jesus Christ wrong. He came as Savior so that we could live on in life after death in the presence of God. And it’s really simple.”

The man questioned, “What do you mean, simple?”

I said, “Because of Jesus, life after death with God is a free gift, given once and for all with no strings attached. You can’t earn it by the good things you do in your life, and the gift is still offered to you is spite of all the bad things you have done. The gift is free and unmerited.”

He said, “Aw, that sounds too good to be true. You must have to do something to please God.”

I said, “As crazy as it may sound, you just have to BELIEVE that what I have told you is true. No, rather, you just have to WANT TO BELIEVE that what I said is true. I know you want to believe that you will have some kind of a good life after death. Well if you believe your Creator God, you can.”

The man looked me in the eyes with his own teary eyes and asked, “You’re not kidding me are you? Is it really that simple?”

I said, “Man, it is! In the Bible, a man came to Jesus and said, ‘I believe! Lord help my unbelief!’ That’s all it takes. Just close your eyes to keep out the distractions and say to God, ‘I want to believe that Jesus came as my Savior; I want to believe that I can trust Him to guide my life (whatever is left of it), and I want to believe that I can live after death in the presence of God. I receive it as a free gift because I sure didn’t earn it and don’t deserve it.’”

That man, so dejected before, raised himself up straight with a smile on his face. By all appearances, there was that day one more child of God in His Family.

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