“Glen’s sister was crossing the street last night and was hit by a truck. She’s in a coma and not expected to live through the night. If she does live, they say she will be a vegetable the rest of her life. I know you’re a Christian. Would you please pray?” With those urgent words Glen’s sales manager left the office I worked from at that client’s place of business having done his best to summon help.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Must be time to pray! Although I agreed I would certainly pray, I was in the middle of something and quite inadvertently let that request slip away. The next afternoon, the sales manager appeared urgently in my office again with an update. “She made it through the night, but now wasn’t expected to live through the afternoon.” It was down to a few hours.
I had been with Glen just a week earlier and had shared my faith with him. Neither he nor his family were believers. With his sister in a coma and about ready to slip into eternity, I came face to face with the fact that I didn’t really care that she was about to enter the gates of Hell. When that thought hit me, I fell to my knees sobbing and unashamedly pleading with God to have mercy on her, to not let her die and go to Hell.
I prayed like she was my sister on her way to Hell. I pulled out all the stops, motivated by a love that welled up in me for a woman I had never met. I received the news a few hours later… Amazingly she had awakened from the coma, was telling jokes and was expected to be released after a couple more days of observation. I learned something new about prayer that day and its intended role in our lives.