Another Chance

Completely randomly today, I walked into a hospital room where I met a couple of very interesting women. The patient was in the hospital for emphysema and asthma or something related to her breathing and her smoking, and this woman had basically hit rock bottom.

Her: "I don’t really practice any religion."
Me: "I don’t practice religion either. I’m kind of just winging it."

So in the course of conversation, we dug deeper into her beliefs. The other woman in the room was this woman’s mother, who was raised Roman Catholic but decided not to raise her kids with any religion. She immediately pointed out that she thought this was a mistake.
We got onto the subject of prayer...the mother seemed pretty insistent on it. I tried to offer suggestions, talking about who I pray to, Jesus. When she asked why not God, I pointed out that even though I can’t explain it Jesus is God. I mentioned that Jesus knew a bit about suffering, having experienced death on a cross, but he showed us that death wasn’t the end, and that just like Jesus rose from the dead we will also rise to go to heaven. She said that she felt a little more comfortable praying to Jesus than some old guy, a la George Burns.
As I look back at it, I was trying to do this a little different than the other time. Instead of trying to force in the whole story of the gospel, I tried to wait for appropriate moments to respond to this woman’s questions, trying to be responsive to where she was. I may never know what happens to this woman, but I do know that this was another chance for me to sow the seeds of the Gospel...and there will be more.