Christians Do Stuff Like That

I have known him for almost a year.  I have helped him move into three different places in that time, have watched him enter and end bad relationships, have been incredibly blessed by him, have laughed with him until my sides hurt, have been frustrated with him, have yelled at him once or twice, have held him as he cried, have held his daughter in my lap and fed her my breakfast and wiped her nose on my shirt tail. By any definition of the word, he is my friend.

For the last several years, he has identified himself as a Muslim, despite a Catholic upbringing. We have discussed the claims of Jesus many times, focusing mainly upon who Jesus was and what following Jesus is like. It helped that the people who were helping him were all Jesus followers and that many of his Muslim “friends” were not just bad Muslims, they were just mean people.

Last weekend he told me that he has now decided he is going to follow Jesus. We had a long talk about what that means (No, I did not quote a single verse from Romans, sorry) and what that could look like. Oh, and he ate what he called “the world’s biggest pork chop”!

Last Thursday, we were supposed to meet, but he called to say he would not be able to make it. A friend of his was battling with addiction and wanted to be clean, but was scared, so he took her to Wake Med and helped her enter the de-tox program there. Sounds like a nice thing to do, right? Let me tell you what that involved:

• They walked 2 miles to go pick up bus passes from the Wake County Homeless Outreach Center, known as Cornerstone.
• They waited for almost an hour at the bus station to get a bus.
• They road out to Wake Med, where they sat in the waiting room for nine hours. Nine. hours.
• While in the waiting room, he allowed her to use up all his cell phone minutes to call her dad, who lives in South Carolina, to let him know what is going on.
• All this while dealing with an addict who is very much needing a fix.
• He missed eating both Lunch and Supper at the soup kitchen. He had no money to buy anything at the cafeteria.

The next day, we eat together at the soup kitchen. As he tells me about the trials of the day before, I tell him that was a big sacrifice on his part, and that I am proud of him. He waves it off.

“It wasn’t anything,” he said. “Besides, now I am a Christian. That means now I do stuff like that.”

photo credit: Son of Groucho