Come to Jesus

Being a paramedic in a big city presents me with the unique opportunity to see people at their best and worst at times. Most of the calls that we go on in a 24 hours shift are usually benign and I would say that less than 5% of them are actually life threatening. So this allows us to spend a large portion of our time on calls with the patient just sitting and talking with them if we so choose to do that. Many crews tend to rush in and then rush out of calls but I really like to take an extra few minutes with the patient to really find out the whole story. There are many reasons that people call 911 but one of the biggest reasons is that people are often alone or scared. You never know what opportunities can arise when you just sit with people and let them talk.
One such example comes to mind from when we went on a call yesterday. We got dispatched to a 65 year old female who was in a care home and had slipped in the bathroom and hit her head. Well, she had very little to complain about but after asking about her history I found out that she had terminal cancer and was now in this nursing home for hospice care. So as we were asking questions I felt something pulling at my heart - kind of like when the rebels got too close to the death star and its tractor beam began pulling them into it. At first I tried to block it out but after a few minutes I knew exactly what it was. God was pulling me in to this lady and he wanted me to share Christ with her before I left the scene. I don't even know if you would call it pulling as much as I felt like if I didn't talk to her I was going to either have a seizure or throw up on her bed. That would have then started a barf- a- rama and that would not have been pretty. But that gives you some insight as to how consumed and bound up I was on this call by the time we finished assessing her.
So I sat down on the edge of her bed and mustered up the courage to ask how she was doing. She said that she was alone out here in Tucson with no kids or husband to leave behind when she died. I told her that it must be very tough to go through all of this alone and if she had a faith in the Lord at all. She had told me that she had an appreciation for everyone's religion and respected Jesus but faith was something that she had not given much though to up to this point. She also told me that she couldn't see herself as a believer in Christ because she had been deeply hurt by a christian family that she had worked for. I told her that it is hard being hurt by others especially those you were close with. I tried to empathize with her letting her know that others hurt us sometimes and that we tend to judge Christ based on the actions of people. I didn't want to press the subject too much so I told her that I would pray for her and she responded very warmly to my gesture. She told me that I was very kind and that she appreciated me taking time out of my day to sit and talk with her.
I don't know if she will ever give another thought to one word of our conversation that we had the other day. I would like to think that in some way I made a difference in her life for a few moments and that she may spend a little time thinking about what a relationship with Christ could mean to her. In the end isn't that all we can really do for others- Take the time to listen, love them where they are at, and pray for God to touch their hearts. We can put ourselves out there and knock at the door of the unbeliever and hope that they will open up. Then we need to just stand back and let God work his magic !!