Go Make Hay

The building is stuffy and reeks of urine and lethargy as the elderly lie bedridden beneath crumpled sheets.

Nonetheless, like moths to a flame, we happily return.

It goes like this: for the past fourteen months, in the busyness of hectic schedules, the pair of us, two middle-aged women who happen to be friends, carve out an afternoon, the words: Secret Service splashed across our day planners.

One of us offers to drive, and we chatter as we go, listening, counseling, tearing up, and laughing, swapping sermon notes and stories. We dive down down down, into the wondrous depths of the Bible, astonished by the ways God’s Word forms our daily lives.

This is our pact: as long as we have breath in our lungs, we refuse to retire from eternal work. This common passion unites us, a fire burning hot in our bones: taking the Gospel to the least of these.

As we arrive at the facility we pause to pray.

Please, Heavenly Father, give us soft and tender hearts. And courage to speak the truth in love.

I root around in my bag and pluck a piece of gum from the jumbo pack, curling the soft, minty stick between my teeth, a potent remedy for staving off the nausea that rises upon entering hallways stained by the noxious odor of death.

Lest you imagine that I am some do-gooder, a woman who has perfected these afternoons of Secret Service, having crucified all selfishness, or that I have been graced a blank calendar to do whatever-it-is-that-suits-my-fancy, know this: nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, I always have a reasonable excuse to forgo local missions.

Always.

My day planner is stuffed. Fuller than I prefer. In further transparency, I struggle to accept the current demands in this season of life.

In fact, just last week I moaned to my husband about my lack of time, my lack of resources, and my relentless schedule.

Too much outpouring, Jon, all at once, I sighed, zinging calendar commitments toward him like bullets from a firing squad.

This is not sustainable, I might have whimpered, eyebrows rising as I stood in our kitchen, browning meat for the sauce.

I felt awful for complaining and later prayed and repented of my griping.

My about-face was swift as the Lord kindly brought to mind Corrie and Betsie Ten Boom, sisters once jailed in Ravensbrück, middle-aged women who repeatedly shared the Gospel while suffering in this Nazi prison camp. If two, middle-aged Dutch women, once huddled and freezing in threadbare rags, starving, mistreated, and forced to work inhumane hours were willing to share the Gospel and risk further torture, who am I to whine?

Proverbs 10:5 says:

He who gathers in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps in harvest is a son who brings shame.

I run my finger slowly across the verses once, twice, and again, remembering an old-fashioned phrase that rights my wandering heart:

Make hay while the sun shines.

We are called to intentionally share the truth of Jesus now before he returns.

So, my friend and I keep returning to this forsaken place, holding each other accountable, making hay while the sun shines. We leave uplifted and exhilarated, knowing we are pleasing God by sharing his Son.

Christ is with us, leading the way.

What a privilege to travel the rooms full of shattered bodies and minds, listening to stories and sorrows and garbled, nonsensical words strung together. We read the Bible and pray as we clasp veiny hands and cradle aching hearts. My friend pulls a pair of reading glasses from a stash she keeps in her shoulder bag, a gift that perpetually yields startled, happy grins. I can see!

We speak clearly, and in unadorned speech: the misery born of sin, the about-face of repentance, and the beauty of Christ–crucified and risen to redeem those given to him by the Father. Every visit is a touch different; never as tidy as one might imagine. Regardless, our mission remains fixed.

We have come to scatter Gospel seeds and ask the Lord to bring dead bones to life.

Our visits have been met with curiosity and warmth, resistance and disgust. Not everyone is a fan of Truth, and some have even denied us permission to pray over them. One might guess that elderly, feeble men and women, languishing in a hospital bed would respond with relief and delight at the hope of salvation offered through Jesus.

But the hard truth is that poverty, illness, old age, and looming death (in and of themselves) do not produce heart transformation. Neither do riches, good health, or youth.

Heart change is a work of God.

My friend and I have watched, stunned, as turbulent responses to the Gospel rise in a terrifying, mighty crescendo, on vivid display in those dingy, overheated rooms as infirmed stiff-arm Christ. It cuts my heart, to see Corinthians 2:16 play out in real-time:

But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of him everywhere. For we are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing, to one a fragrance from death to death, to the other a fragrance from life to life. Who is sufficient for these things? For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.

My comfort is this: God is sovereign in everything, including salvation. So, we continue to labor and trust him.

No one is promised tomorrow.

But we do have this moment, a precious gift, this sliver in time.

Take a moment to genuinely reflect. Are you joyfully sharing the Gospel or have you grown lackadaisical? Do you unapologetically love comfort to the degree that you religiously sink into your cushioned chair, scrolling the stock market, news, and social media, while skipping face-to-face Gospel sharing? Do you make decisions primarily based on ease? Are you passively refusing to deny yourself anything in order to meet spiritual needs?

Or perhaps you are terribly busy doing good things but have forgotten the purpose and pleasure of sharing the Good News?

As my husband often says, Jesus gave us The Great Commission, not The Great Suggestion.

It’s time to get going.

I invite you to rise and go, sharing the truth with people in your locale. Image-bearers who are aching, in need of Christ.

How sad for any Christian to fritter away golden days on trivial pursuits; how beautiful, how prudent to go and share the goodness of Christ Jesus today.

I pray you will link arms with a Christian friend and get to it. Yes, you might feel uncomfortable or nervous at first, but over time it will become more natural and even fun.

How precious to know that God is near and will gift you with words. The results are in his hands.

God has placed us on planet Earth to know him, adore him, and make him known.

So go ahead and make hay.

While there is still time.

And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” – Matthew 4:19