The Man on the Street

And his face still sears my memory.

The way he confessed that he believed in Christ’s reality but didn’t want to embrace Him as his Savior. Didn’t want to commit. Didn’t want to give himself up and totally surrender to God above.

And that breaks my heart.

 That he was so near to the Truth. That he was an inch away from the difference of eternal salvation compared to eternal damnation.

I can still picture us standing there in the thrumming soul of Fremont with our Worldview Academy pamphlets. Two guys. Two girls. Just striving to create an opening. Just trying to reach out and understand and heal that broken heart bared right in front of us. I could have touched him. Touched him with his ink-scrawled tattoos and tangled hair and smoldering cigarette and felt that he was blood and flesh too.

And I can still feel myself trembling as I try to grasp the words sinking out of my reach to explain how much Jesus loves him. That He died for him.

I don’t even know his name.

And we tried to explain. Tried to help him see that the problem was inside of man and that we all need help and that Christ gave us genuine value when He valued us enough to trade His God-life for our bruised souls. How could we have helped him see that there is a hell and that his decision remains crucial?

Because our time on earth is numbered. Because the sand is running clean through and the hand ticks ever nearer. Because any second now, we could be taken away to another world.

And does he know this? Does he see? And I collapse on my knees in all my brokenness and beg God to just allow him to see.

I saw him for less than three hundred seconds. Yet his face will linger with me for eternity.

Change now remains impossible. Regret over unsaid words cannot restore anything. The broken words God wanted said were said. All I can do is pray. And I pray. I pray for his soul, hands opening, just pleading for a chance that the door to heaven remains open for that one in a sea of humanity.

Oh God, change his heart.

I see him there. A faint outline of muscled skin in ragged shorts and bare feet. I can see his eyes once again, intensely gazing inside, and I wonder. Has he come over yet?