A Surprise Hidden in Plain Sight

    For more than twenty-five years, Dr. Thomas Shipp was pastor of a great and caring congregation that began in his living room and grew to more than eight thousand members. Although in constant demand as a speaker, Dr. Shipp often went to small churches on preaching missions.

    One Sunday evening he drove from Dallas to a small town to preach at 8:30. Some people standing around in front of the church said, “Preacher, see that house over there? (next-door to the parsonage, which was next-door to the church). A woman lives there with her seventeen-year-old daughter. A man drives up at ten o’clock every night. He leaves the next morning at two-thirty.” They told Shipp that the girl was going to Kansas City and that everyone knew why she was going — she was “in trouble.” Furthermore, they implied that the man who came each night was responsible. Shipp watched. Sure enough, at exactly ten o’clock, a man drove up and went inside. But he was gone in the morning.

    Next day, almost everywhere Dr. Shipp went, people talked about this girl. Shipp asked the local pastor: “Have you ever been over to see the family that lives next-door?”

    The pastor protested, “Man, I wouldn’t be caught dead in that house!”

    So Shipp decided he would go himself. He introduced himself at the door, “You don’t know me; I’m Tom Shipp from Dallas, Texas. I’m over here preaching in the church. I understand that your daughter left town this morning. I just wanted to come by and let you know that I was thinking of you — this must be a difficult day for you. I don’t even know your name, but I’m saying a prayer for you today.”

    The woman broke down in tears. When able to regain her composure, she explained, “I don’t know what I am going to do without my daughter.” Once inside the house, Tom discovered a third person, the eighty-five-year-old grandmother. The girl’s father had died some years back. So the mother and daughter had come to this house to live with Grandma because Grandfather was also dead. Then Grandmother suffered an illness that demanded round-the-clock care lest she strangle to death. So the mother was completely confined to the house. No one in the community saw her. The daughter did all the shopping.

No one in the community saw her.

    That evening, Tom arranged for a sitter for the grandmother so the mother could attend the revival. Tom introduced the woman to the congregation. “I want you to meet your neighbor and my new friend. This is a great night in her life. She lives next-door to the parsonage. Her daughter had to leave home this morning because they no longer had food to eat, and no one in this town would give the girl a job. Therefore, the daughter had to go to another town to work and send back money for her mother’s and grandmother’s living. Grandmother, who lives in the same house, is eighty-five years old and requires constant care. Your neighbor says she doesn’t know what she would do, if it weren’t for her brother who drives 120 miles every night and stays with Grandma between the hours of 10:00 P.M. and 2:30 A.M. while my friend gets four and a half hours of sleep. The reason this night is special to her is because it’s the first time she has been back in this church since she was six years old, when her father was the founding pastor of this church.

    The woman by the church must have felt some of the same feelings as the woman whom Jesus watched trudge up the trail to Jacob’s well. Because of social constraints, it was risky to help such people. No one would have blamed Jesus if he had pulled his robe over his face and ignored her. After all, he was tired. The disciples were gone, so who would have known? Besides, if he taught her anything, she probably wouldn’t have the brains to grasp it or the spiritual framework to retain it. And even if she did, she had no credibility to influence other people with his message.

    But our Master saw a person who mattered to God. As weary as he was, he quickly sensed a wounded soul badly in need of bandages, and he gently moved her into a nonthreatening conversation. But since he was talking to an outsider, he knew he would need to be unusually creative.

 

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Excerpted from The Jesus Touch, ©2002, Howard Publishing Company. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Title: "The Abandoned Water Jar, Part 5"
Author: Lynn Anderson
Publication Date: August 14, 2002