I went to meet with Andy's doctor over his knee injury from football and got to spend some quality time in the World Prayer Center @ New Life Church in Colorado Springs. The view out the windows of the front range of the Rocky Mountains and Pike's Peak is breath taking for sure. Anyway it was sweet time seeking the Lord… Real sweet. So I headed to Phoenix on our itineration schedule and through an interesting arrangement of timing I met this old man name Michael. I actually could not find my hotel and stopped in another hotel seeking directions. As I walked in this old man smiles as he brushed past me on his way out the door… the attendant @ this hotel said the old man was a hitchhiker from Palm Springs headed to Cleveland. I got my directions and went outside and saw the old man trying to get through the fence to get back to the interstate highway. I could not help myself as I thought, what could this little old man be doing out here hitchhiking? So I backed up, got him in the car and took him to my hotel room. He had been to this hotel earlier and they had kicked him out I found out… then I told them his story. I could see the sense of guilt wash over their faces but I too understand the resistance to help. If not for Jesus where we find compassion on the broken people in this world? Will we be a good Samaritan or pass them on by?

His story was the same as the hotel clerk said but what I found was a life of brokenness. He had wasted his life savings gambling and @ 83 years old he had nothing. Strangely he was clean and seemed mentally tough… he was a WWII veteran and a prisoner of war in Germany. His wife had passed away a few years ago and he had been alone at his home in CA. He found out his sister of 97 was dying in Cleveland and he wanted to see her before she passed away. So I gathered him up and found a bus station and got him on his way. He cried as I paid his bus fare and said he had never met anyone like me… like me I thought and started to weep too. I pointed him to the one that can change lives and take broken messes and fix them like brand new. We talked awhile and he started to sense that his time on this earth was very short too so I prayed with him and led him to Jesus, then sent him on his way.

Each day the Lord seems to give us something to confront us with a problem that we can fix, that we can minister too. May he continue to keep our hearts tender so we will know what he has for us to do each day… As I write again I weep with joy knowing God had me in the right place @ the right time to help an old man named Michael.