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Meet Others' Needs

The dying girl's question cut through the busy emergency room and brought it to silent stop. It was the last of her questions. The earlier questions had been extremely difficult to answer, but at least they had been predictable. 

Judy's car had exploded in flames when it was rear-ended. Her sister and cousin were trapped in the back seat. She had been thrown from the car. The rescue crew hadn't even realized she was a person laying there until she called out.

"Did my sister and cousin live? Do I still have my hair? My ears? My nose? Will I still be able to have children? Will I live?" Her next and final question was still more difficult and a complete shock. Everyone in the ER stopped to search for an answer and hoped someone else would.

As I read the account I thought about how I would answer. I hoped someone else had. That hope had pushed me to search for more details. I had to know if her question had been answered and how.

The dying girl's desperate question, "Does anyone here know Jesus?" As her strength faded she softly kept repeating her question, "Does anyone here know Jesus?" There is only one important question in this life and the next and Judy was asking it.

Seeing her question again brought me back to my earlier thoughts. How would I have answered? How would I answer now? The truth was unsettling. One never knows exactly what one will do in certain circumstances, but I had a pretty good idea what my response would have been. I would have sought out the corner of the room furthest away. The atheist would have been closer than I would have been. Even more unsettling was the certainty that, even though God had turned my life around, if this was to happen again my response would still be the same. It wouldn't have been that I didn't care whether she got an answer - I did, but I realized I could not give her an answer that helped. My answer would have been, "Not me. I'm sorry, but I don't know him."

Fortunately, God had turned my life around. I vowed that would never be in a position where I was unable to answer when someone asked for someone who knew Jesus. As I made my vow I heard a thought, "like that is ever going to happen." No sooner than this thought had ended than I heard God, "Don't you hear them?" No, I didn't hear them. Where God? When? And then I began to hear. When someone gives up on life and no one answers and they begin down the path of suicide. When someone is bullied and no one answers and they begin to plan murder. An unwed mother. A husband struggling to feed his family.  

If we listen, they are calling. They need us to listen. They need us to know how to pray They need us to know Jesus.