What would you have done?

Dec. 10

Dear Church,

A man walked into the church office this week. He wanted someone to pray for him. I happened to arrive there from my lunch break. He asked me if I could take him to the sanctuary and pray for him. Apparently, his eighty-some-year-old father was dying. I said, ‘sure.’ On the way to the main sanctuary, the man kept talking and talking. He said he came to our church many years ago and worshipped a few times. I thought his whole talking was excessive. Half of what he said, I could not understand. He spoke very fast. Most of it was broken English, and it had nothing to do with his father’s illness.

Once we sat down to pray, I realized that he was not interested in prayer. He came to ask for money. He said his family is out of town and that he has no means to bring them back to Toronto. He wanted bus tickets for a family of five, amounting to about one hundred dollars. The more I spent time with him, the more my suspicion grew. It was a déjà vu feeling of some years ago when someone walked into the church office and desperately asked for money. The man said he wanted to get his belongings back from a storage company. If I could only pay for the money he owed to the company, his life would be back in order. I was so gullible, and I gave him the money as shown on the invoice. I think it was around three hundred dollars. I saw him leave the office and go to his car in the parking lot. I noticed there were three friends waiting for him. They were giggling. I instinctively knew that I was conned. Why did I not carefully look at the fake invoice?

Fast forward a few years, and I have a man sitting next to me. First, he asked for prayer for his father. But now, his father is no longer in our conversation. He wants money. I even see fake tears welling up in his eyes. I was willing to be deceived one more time. Jesus, too, was knowingly deceived many times. But I wanted to know who he was at least. So, I asked him, ‘Do you have an ID?’ ‘Can you tell me your real name?’ He said he had nothing on him to show me. ‘Hmm, nothing? Do you have a friend whom I can call?’ He said he does not know anyone in the city. ‘Hmm, no one?’ I told him I would help him if he could be honest with me. He left, shouting ‘you don’t want to help me.’