A Day When Heaven Touched Earth

Written by Mary Sterenberg, this is the third in a series of stories about ways in which prayer has touched people’s lives. The stories will run between now and the CRC Prayer Summit 2015 set for April 13-15 at All Nations CRC in Los Angeles, Calif.

If you have a story about prayer that you would like to share, please send it to Chris Meehan at [email protected]. Any questions, call 1-616-224-0849.

I was attending the Listening Evangelism Dunamis conference last year at Calvin College.

For the final activity, to practice all that we learned, we gathered in the Undercroft of Calvin’s Chapel to worship and pray corporately.

We were asked to reflect quietly for 10 minutes, seeking God’s guidance and wisdom on where he would like us to go that day, what to look for, whom to talk to, potential prayer needs, etc.

I quieted my heart before the Lord, not certain at all if he would speak to me at this time.  But I did get some nudges and thoughts and I wrote them on my paper:  “Outside of the Children’s Museum, outside of the Dog Pit hot dog place, a woman with red hair in a ponytail, blue shirt, and prayer need of ‘Loss’.” 

Since another member in our team also heard that location, our group of four decided we would go to the Children’s Museum in downtown Grand Rapids to seek people for whom to pray.

We arrived, and I looked for persons matching the description I had received and those of my teammates.  I rather expected the redhead with the ponytail to be outside the museum, but no one matching that description was around. 

The first hour was interesting, observing the others interactions and rejoicing with their good work. 

The second hour was where I experienced the “convergence” we had learned about in the conference. 

Having left the Children’s Museum, I was hanging around the Rosa Park’s Circle area near the Dog Pit. 

Not much was happening. There was just a lady sitting minding her own business writing, and several people, dogs, and mothers with strollers passing by.  A young man was going back and forth and round and round with his skate board.  Click, clap, clunk. 

Then one of my teammates said to me, “Hey Mary, what about that lady sitting over writing. She has a ponytail.  She could be your redhead.”

Her hair was not the color red I had seen in my listening prayer time, but it certainly had a red hue and was pulled back in a tight ponytail and, hey, her shirt was light blue.   “Lord,” I asked, “is this who you want me to approach?”  “Yes,” was the inner witness I sensed.

I mustered up the confidence to walk past her, then turned around and walked past her again.

Then I approached her, and she looked up.  I smiled and simply said, “God sent me here today to pray with someone, and I think he sent me here to pray with you.”

Tears streamed down her face. 

“May I sit here with you?  My name is Mary, what is your name?” 

She told me and welcomed me to sit. Instantly, I reached to touch her hand resting on the table. She did not pull away and my hand never left hers for at least the next hour. 

What happened next can only be described as heaven touching earth, as the Holy Spirit led me in exactly what to pray.

She poured out her story to me readily. She was diagnosed as bi-polar and her family did not understand her, she lamented. She had been homeless for seven years, divorced for just as long, and had been with at least a few other men since then.

She had a Catholic background but did not go to church.  She did read the Bible from time to time and pray.

She was writing to her boyfriend, another homeless person she had met on the streets who recently found himself back in jail.  She loved him, she said.  She was very sad they were not together.

After listening, I asked her if she would like me to pray with her. 

“Yes, I would like that.”

I held both of her hands as she cried into the white napkins she pulled from her backpack. And the prayer flowed out of me. I called down the resurrection power of Jesus Christ to touch her brain and whatever had been dysfunctional was to be made functional, healed and whole.

The pain in her heart from all of the abuse, neglect, sadness, mood swings, and loneliness, was to be pulled out and filled with the love of Jesus Christ. 

I then felt led to ask her to pray in her own words. She stumbled at first, but then said, “I ask you Jesus to come into my heart and be my Lord and Savior.  I ask for your will to be my will and I surrender myself to you.” 

The click, clap, clunk of the skateboard finally quieted and it seemed all of earth held still around us. Jesus’ presence was tangible, palpable; all else around us was silent.  Jesus was touching his daughter.

Mary Sterenberg is the Great Lakes Regional Prayer Mobilizer for the Christian Reformed Church.