Related articles and links |  1 of 2

One opportunity I did not want to miss at Christmas was to serve dinner at a homeless shelter downtown. After being relegated to the church's substitute list in September, I jumped at the chance when a friend called to say she'd need me one Wednesday in mid-December. Besides wanting to get better acquainted with members of a new church we'd been attending, I had been longing for a more tangible experience of faith to round out my spiritual resumé. For too long my faith had been living in my head, with no other work to do but memorize facts about God and figure out my personal life.

Indeed, my head had become a lively Parisian salon to which a variety of voices paid regular visits. Jesus had come in recently, commanding me, "Feed my sheep," while an aging Miss America reminded me to "help people," if only to impress the judges. More often, especially since the month when I'd passed my 45th birthday, the conversation was dominated by the topic of death—specifically, mine.

After miscues in both December and January, waiting in vain for fellow church members to join me (two homeless shelters with the same name?), I was more determined than ever to do my selfless good works, even if for selfish reasons. Those mishaps, which had seemed like a supernatural test, turned out to be a kind of scavenger hunt for an after-Christmas gift God had hidden for me.

On a freezing night in February, I finally found myself at Freedom House, standing behind a long table, serving up cornbread. As more than 100 people came in from the 20-degree weather, they walked along with their trays and thanked us often. One man was handsome, except for a few missing teeth, and could have been a basketball star or banker in another time. Then came a huge man with beautifully chiseled facial features, wearing not only a knit hat but also a bulky scarf knotted on the front of his forehead, making him look like a swami or one of the three wise men. Another short, timid man with thin strands of hair plastered over his scalp in a severe left-to-right orientation shuffled by, muttering the whole time he was there, "I should be in the hospital. They wouldn't let me stay."

I was feeling a certain lightness of heart. In fact, I hadn't thought about death the whole evening. Then a tall man with a voice like a sports broadcaster came up to the serving table, directly in front of me. Would he want something? Should I think of something spiritual to say? Instead he asked, "Hey, are you all Christians?" Like a modern Elijah, in his wonderfully clear voice, he began his story.

"I want to tell y'all what happened to me. It was September 10, 1999. September 10th. I was in North Carolina lying on my bed. I know I did not fall asleep. This was not a dream. An angel came to me to show me heaven. Man, you guys, it was real. I'm telling you, it was real. There was a river, a huge river, flowing right through the middle of where I was walking, and it flowed into a fountain but never flowed out. There were lots of buildings, real architecture that was mostly white and beautiful, huge, man. You know how Jesus says 'In my Father's house there are many mansions'? Well, it's true. There are houses in heaven. And the angel was showing me around. I recognized her because it was the same one—like she was my guardian angel—who came to me 15 years ago when I tried to commit suicide. Both times I told her I wanted to stay there, but she said it was not my time. I'm telling you, guys, it was real. I didn't want to come back here, but it wasn't my time. And there were people there, not really flesh and bones, but there were men and women and children. They were kind of clear, but everyone was like a bronze color, kind of see-through bronze or something. You could definitely recognize people."

next page... |  1 of 2

December 2003, Vol. 47, No. 12