Read time:
I’ve put off writing this one for a day, partly because I wasn’t sure how to tell it without sounding like I was selling something.
I’m just a guy who loves Jesus, living in the piney backwoods, trying to live my faith and love others the way He does, and some days the line between sharing what I believe and pushing it on people feels thinner than I’d like. I worked a Gideons booth for the first time at our parish fair in southwest Louisiana (a parish is what we call a county down here). It’s a small-town fair, going on a hundred years now, with a carnival, food vendors, livestock shows, and arts and crafts, and the folks who run it call it a family fair. A good deal of that day is still turning over in my head. What follows is what I remember, in roughly the order it came back to me.
For anyone who doesn’t know them, the Gideons are an international organization of Christian volunteers who have been placing Bibles and New Testaments in hotel rooms, hospitals, schools, and similar places for over a century, and a local chapter is called a camp. I didn’t keep count of how many we gave out, which I suppose someone might want to know, but I restocked the table a handful of times, and that’s as close as I can come. It was my first time working the booth, with my camp sponsor beside me, and I prayed before I got there and then when there was time, which wasn’t always. Mostly I stayed watchful, waiting to see what would happen. There were people I knew walking past, and I’d forgotten how much I enjoy that, seeing a friend you haven’t talked to in a while and then meeting somebody new two minutes later. Parents herding kids, seniors out for the day, groups of friends, everybody in that festival mood where nobody is in a hurry and nobody expects to be stopped by a table of Bibles.
I’d always pictured this part as something more polished than it turned out to be. In my head there was a presentation, with the right things in the right order, and I think I was a little afraid of getting it wrong. What actually happened was people picking up one of the pocket New Testaments and turning it over, and I’d mention the topical helps in the front, the pages that list a problem you might be having and send you to where Scripture speaks to it. Those pages got me through some hard stretches as a teenager, and again in college, and honestly again as a grown man, so I had something to say about them without trying to build it. When people noticed them I could tell I had their full attention, which surprised me. It came easier than I thought it would, and I keep wondering whether I just got lucky with who walked up, or whether it was something more.
There was one man who was friendly right from the start, the kind of person you talk to for a minute and feel like you’ve known for years. When we got around to the little Bible he said religion wasn’t for him, and we talked a bit more, but he shied away from it, and I could see he was done. I remember thinking I should say something else, and then thinking I shouldn’t. So I let it go, which is not really my habit, and I’m still not sure I did it well. Later a different man, a believer, asked me a question I had no good answer for. I didn’t have the Scripture for it or even the right words, so we prayed together, and I don’t know what else I could have done standing at a folding table with a stack of New Testaments.
The Bibles are free to whoever wants one, though somebody pays for every copy, and that’s the donors who give to the Gideons, members included. I thought about that between one family and the next, and it kept leading me back to the thing underneath all of it, which is what I’d have wanted anyone at that table to hear if they’d had the time to stay.
Every one of us has sinned, which just means gone our own way from God, me included, and the wage of that is death, being cut off from Him for good. I know that’s hard news. Jesus, God’s own Son, never did wrong, and because He loves us, He died on a cross in our place and came back to life three days later. Forgiveness and life with God are a gift, and what’s asked is that we turn from our own way and trust Him.
I’m learning it isn’t my job to change anybody’s heart, because that’s His work. I’m asked to tell the story, and God’s desire is that every one of us be saved. I’m not trying to recruit anyone to a church or a team, only to pass along the news, and I know plenty of people at that fair hold other beliefs, or none. If someone says no, that’s their choice, and I’ll still grieve that choice and hope they change their minds. The offer stands the same either way, like those New Testaments on the folding table, free to anyone who’ll put out a hand.