Meeting an Irish lady on the bus
As is my custom, I prayed for a ‘holiday gift’ on my recent long-service leave in New Zealand. This ‘holiday gift’ is a prayer for a divine appointment (like Philip and the Ethiopian in Acts 8).
The bus was full (good for divine appointments) but the lady next to me was sleeping. I started to pray that she might wake up and hear the good news!
About half way through our journey she woke up and I was able to make a lead in comment like, “Hope you had a good sleep.” Having opened up the conversation it was easy to ask her about what she was doing in New Zealand. I soon discovered she was from Ireland and on a working holiday. After a time I was able to ask some questions about Ireland and eventually to ask, “Now Ireland is a Roman Catholic country but what percentage of people do you think really take it seriously?”
“Very few, especially in my age group,” she said. “Most of them are like me. We had to listen to religious teaching at school but I don’t believe it.”
Then she started to ask questions about me and discovered I was a storyteller. She was intrigued by that until she discovered I was a Bible storyteller! Perhaps she then wished herself sitting by someone else. However, she agreed to hear one story and I let her choose. She chose an Abraham story – perhaps because at least the name was familiar to her.
The story seemed to surprise her and she was interested enough to have a casual conversation about what she liked, and what she noticed about people from the story. She also had several questions, the main one being, “Did Sarah ever have a baby?” So I told her the birth of Isaac story (in summary because I hadn’t learned it in such detail). Then she said, “Well what happens next?”
So I said, “I normally tell eight stories that give an overview of the Bible. You’ve heard story two. Could I go backwards first?”
So, I told her Genesis 3:1-15. After some discussion, she said, “Well what about story three?”
Over the course of an hour, I told her all eight stories and then also used a gospel outline called ‘Two Ways to Live’ to summarise what she’d heard and to explain what a Christian was and how she could become one.
I didn’t feel she was ready to become a Christian but she thanked me enthusiastically and said, “I obviously discarded the Bible too soon. I want to go back and read it.”
