Buddy, Can You Spare a Prayer?

[Shazi]

I was feeling sorry for myself. I was going through a divorce and had moved from my home by the ocean in Southern California, back east to be near my family. I had only returned a couple of months when my mother had a massive heart attack and died. “How could she have picked now to do this when I needed her so much?”

I felt only darkness, even while soaking up the full sunshine of the morning as I walked toward the library building. My father, devastated by her death, now needed me more than ever. In desperation, I began taking care of other elderly people in the area by starting my own business and working six days a week.

As I approached the front door of the building, I saw a man sitting on a stone bench outside the library. He was smoking a cigarette. His clothes were filthy, his faced unwashed and unshaven, and there was a stench of stale nicotine in the air around him. As I got closer, he spoke to me. “Can you give me a dollar, lady?” he asked rather gently. I stopped, not wanting to just walk by without answering. Emotions came up in me after months of my own losses and I fired back a quick reply. “I’ll give you a dollar, but y ou are going to have to earn it.”

He stared at me as if I had said something rather crazy. I didn’t give him a chance to ask what he was supposed to do.

While trying not to drop the books, I fumbled in my purse and pulled out a one-dollar bill. Handing it to him I said, “I’ve had a really bad day, and you’re going to have to pray for me.”

A tender expression came over his weathered face. “Okay, but will you say one for me too?”

What’s wrong with the world? He had his dollar. I didn’t feel like I had anything left to give to anyone, and here someone else was asking.

“Alright,” I replied. “I’ll pray for you.” I thought this would now settle the issue as I turned my back and started to walk away from him.

“Will you pray for me now?”

His soft words floated in the air, stopping my world. The books in my arms almost fell to the ground as I heard him say it. What was this turning into? Inside, though, I heard the quiet voice of God speak to my heart. I knew I had just said I would pray, and now I was being put to the test.
“Alright,” I told him as I went to sit on the bench. “I’ll pray for you.”

Without another word he took the cigarette from his mouth, and reaching down, crushed the lit part into the dirt around the bench. He then put what was left of the cigarette into the front pocket of his shabby shirt. Removing the dirty cap from his head, he got off the bench and knelt down beside me. He closed his eyes and waited for me to pray.

To this day I will never know what people thought as they came in and out of the library, observing me praying for this humble man in his tattered clothes who knelt before me. In my eyes, he was no longer homeless, but God’s helper sent to me. In his asking me, daring me, to stop and pray, something happened. He gave far more to me than I could have ever given him.

The years have gone and the hurts have healed. New ones come and go, but the lesson I learned that day was forever sewn into my soul. Many wonderful things in life do not come wrapped in the packages we think they should. God used a carpenter, not a king, to save the world.

Maybe if I could go back in time and be a wiser young woman than I was, it would have been me asking this raggedly clothed man, “Buddy, can you spare a prayer?”

Kate Prado - Chicken Soup for the Soul

[ForumAdmin]

We received the following message from Kate Prado


Many thanks for posting my story, "Buddy Can You Spare A Prayer?"

My story is true and I have never forgotten the lesson I learned from it happening. There is value in every life God placed here on the earth and we are never without hope as long as we still know how to pray.

God bless-
Kate Prado

[Shazi]

I loved this story! If only a photographer was there to capture that moment with you and this humble man in his tattered clothes.