Pastoral Calling

I was coming back from Ridgecrest a few years ago, and there had been three thousand students or so. They show up everywhere--for a whole week. Finally you're on the plane, and you think, "O Lord, thank you that I'm moving away from this place." And because the Bible is the last desperate defense, you pull it up around your face. When you have your Bible around your face, everybody will leave you alone. It's a frightening specter. Even the stewardess won't ask you if you want peanuts. I said to the Lord, "Lord, please, I just want to be alone for two or three hours before I get back to Omaha."

I became aware of a young man crying in the seat beside me. He looked like a student, 19 or 20 years of age, and again I said, "Lord, he's not mine. My sinners are all on the ground in Omaha." He kept crying, and finally I put down my Bible and I said, "Son, I don't know what the matter is, but if there's anything I can help you with, I'd like to."

He told me that his mother and his father and his little sister had all three been killed in a car accident in Asheville, North Carolina, the day before on vacation. Suddenly, my heart grew very still and silent. Then I felt the pain, or tried to. I turned to him and said, "I don't know what you must be feeling. I can't imagine this, but I know Someone who understands it perfectly." I took the Bible behind which I'd been hiding and shared with him about Jesus Christ and was able to lead him to Christ in the air.

But it was not my last act. I got off the plane there, and I called someone I knew and asked him to meet him at the plane where he was going to be landing. He needed help that day.

You see, the world is mine. I can't brush off somebody because I happen to sit by him and don't know him. Yes, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." If he is a servant, then we are servants.

A pastor needs the tact of a diplomat, the strength of Samson, the patience of Job, the wisdom of Solomon--and a cast-iron stomach.