Archive: Everyone Walked Past Him

a true story as told to Alan Cliburn, Van Nuys, California

It would have been easy to ignore him. Everyone else had walked right past, perhaps pretending that he didn’t exist, but I had seen him sitting there on the sidewalk when we left the convention hall for lunch. He was still there when we returned, an empty bottle in his hand.

My companions and I didn’t stop, however, still discussing some of the things our principle speaker had said during the morning session. This was a convention of ministers and we had been inspired to win a lost world for Christ.

But nobody stopped to speak to that drunken man. Of course we had a full schedule, with workshops and seminars and special music. Besides, it’s impossible to witness to someone as inebriated as that man on the sidewalk; everyone knows that.

But I couldn’t let it go quite that easily. Somehow it seemed incredibly contradictory to applaud a talk about winning the world for Christ and then leave a man practically lying in the gutter right outside the convention hall. The fact that none of the other ministers felt called to help him in no way removed the burden from my heart, even if they were mostly older and possibly wiser than I was. So I excused myself and returned to the street.

It might have been easier if the man had gone. I secretly hoped that the sidewalk would be empty and I could return to my colleagues with the knowledge that at least I had tried to help one of the unfortunates.

He was still there, however, still clutching that bottle. My experience was limited, but I walked up to him anyway.

“How about something to drink?” I asked.

“Sure,” came the slurred response. “What’ve you got?”

I tabled the urge to say, “Living Water.” “Let’s go across the street,” I suggested.

He couldn’t walk unassisted, so I wrapped one arm around his waist and he threw an arm around my shoulders. Together we staggered across the street to a restaurant.

I thought he would object when I ordered coffee instead of something stronger, but he didn’t. After about five cups he was starting to sober up slightly.

“Why don’t you go to the meetings with me this afternoon?”

“Okay,” he agreed, not even asking what the meetings were about.

George—that was his name—sat next to me all afternoon, smelling terrible. After a while he dozed off. I was scared to death that he would snore, but he didn’t.

I took George to dinner that night and he was quite sober by then and not really a bad guy at all, just down on his luck, as he put it, and unable to find work. I didn’t mention the Lord, but I offered to put him up for the night.

“Don’t know when I can pay you back,” he began.

“No problem,” I assured him.

I checked him into a motel near the convention center, but gave him no money. The corner liquor store was just a little too convenient.

“Pick you up in the morning and we’ll have breakfast,” I said.

“Look, I can’t let you keep picking up the tab,” he replied. “You don’t even know me.”

“Yes, I do,” I told him with a grin. “You’re George and I’m Ed.”

“Glad to meet you,” he answered, smiling. “Thanks a lot, Ed.”

“See you in the morning.”

I ran into some of my fellow ministers when I returned to the hotel where we were staying and of course they wanted to know what had happened to George. They didn’t look too impressed when I told them.

“He’ll be gone before you get there in the morning,” one of them warned. “I know how these guys operate.”

There was certainly the possibility that George would be gone when I went to pick him up. That wasn’t the issue, though, as far as I was concerned. The important thing was that I had tried to help a fellow human being.

George was ready and waiting when I arrived at the motel the next morning. He had even borrowed a razor and shaved. The difference in his appearance was remarkable. We had breakfast together and I again invited him to accompany me to the convention.

“Might as well,” he decided. “Don’t have anything else to do.”

The blurry-eyed drunk of the previous afternoon was alert and attentive as we listened to our speaker. I could hardly believe what I was hearing. The convention was attended almost totally by protestant ministers, yet he was preaching a salvation message!

“The simple Gospel story of Jesus dying on the cross and being raised from the dead on the third day is one that needs to be heard more often from the pulpits of this country,” he told us in conclusion. “There are longtime members of your congregations who have never received the gift of eternal life by accepting Christ as their personal Savior. There may even be those attending this convention who have never made this decision.”

George went to lunch with me, accompanied by others in my group. They finally treated him as a person, not as the social outcast who had been sprawled on the sidewalk 24 hours earlier. George was soft-spoken, but he mixed quite well and kept up his end of the conversation.

I really wasn’t interested in his social amenities, however, but there just wasn’t a chance to ask him about his spiritual condition right then.

“How about going to the afternoon session?” I asked George after lunch.

“Is it okay?” George wanted to know.

“You’re my guest,” I replied.

“I enjoyed it a lot this morning,” he added. “I didn’t understand it all, but it sounded good. You know, what that old guy was talking about.”

That “old guy” was one of the most respected men in the country, at least in the Christian community.

“Yeah, he wasn’t bad,” one of my friends admitted, tongue-in-cheek.

We were in smaller groups for the afternoon session and I kept George with me. He just sat and listened as we discussed various theological points and other matters pertaining to the ministry. I expected him to walk out at any moment, bored to death.

But he didn’t, and during the afternoon break I finally had a chance to share my faith in Jesus Christ with George.

“You really believe that, don’t you?” he said when I explained how Jesus can take away our sin and give us a fresh start, transforming us into new creatures.

“Yes, I do,” I assured him. “When I received Christ as my Savior, He gave me the free gift of eternal life. It wasn’t so long ago, either.”

George looked at me for a second. “I knew there was something different about you yesterday. Not too many people would do what you did.”

“I just did what I felt the Lord would have me do,” I told him.

“Aren’t all these other guys Christians?” he questioned. “Don’t they believe the same things you believe?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “Most of them are ministers, in fact.”

“So why didn’t any of them stop to help me yesterday?” he wanted to know.

It was a good question. “Well, some of them are involved in various committees or serving on panels,” I began truthfully, even if the answer didn’t totally satisfy me. “But the point is, George, what about you? Would you like to receive Christ as your Savior right here and now?”

He swallowed. “Yes, I would. Whatever you’ve got, I want.”

We prayed together right there in a fairly secluded corner of the convention center and George invited Jesus to come into his heart. His prayer was simple and awkward, but beautifully sincere.

George stayed for the rest of the convention and we found out a lot more about him during those next few days. For one thing, he had worked as a cook on ships in the past and really wanted to get back to work—if he could find a job.

As it turned out, one of the men attending the convention knew someone in authority in the shipyards on the coast and put in a call to him. There was a job in the galley of a tanker leaving in two days and George could have it if he got there in time.

“I’ll get there, all right,” George said. “If I hitch a ride today— ”

“You aren’t hitching a ride,” I interrupted. “We took up a collection, enough to buy a bus ticket anyway.” “I’ll never be able to pay you back for everything you’ve done for me,” he began.

“Keep up with your Bible study and prayer life and that’ll be payment enough,” I told him.

“I will,” he promised. “And I’ll keep in touch with you, too.”

Less than a week earlier he had been a stranger, a drunken bum who lay on the sidewalk with a bottle in his hand, but it was a brother in Christ I put on the bus that Friday afternoon.

“I’ll never forget you, Ed,” he said.

“You’d better not,” I replied with a grin, shaking hands with him.

I heard from George only once after that. He had landed the job and was on a journey halfway around the world. “And Jesus is with me,” he added. “There’s not too much to do aboard ship when you’re off duty, except drink—and I’ve quit that—so I read my Bible a lot.”

My letter to George came back. There had been a storm and the ship had gone down; all aboard were lost.

I stared at the letter in my hands. Not all, I thought. George may have gone to a watery grave, but he was not lost. He had found Christ and he would live forever.