Miracles (14 page)

John's face went slack, and Sam realized how much of his hopes John had been pinning on Sam's gift. “Maybe it's just fading,” John said. “Maybe it'll come back.”

“No.” Sam sat down and shook his head. “I just know that it's gone. I think I knew on some level when I woke up this morning. After that dream . . .”

John took the seat next to him and leaned forward with his elbows on his knees. “Tell me about that dream,” he said. “Sam, what happened in this one?”

“It was about the lost coin again,” he said. “This time it was
my
coin, and I was looking instead of just watching someone else look. And then God spoke to me.”

“What did he say this time?”

Sam hadn't thought about it since he'd told Kate earlier. He closed his eyes and tried to remember. “He said, ‘And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the age.'”

John sat back in his chair. “That's the last verse in the Gospel of Matthew. The last words Matthew recorded before Jesus ascended.”

“Why would he say that to me?” Sam asked. “What does it mean?”

“Just what it says, I'd imagine.” He stared at Sam for a long moment. “Sam, are you sure it's gone?”

“Gone,” he said. “I've tried. I can't hear a thing. Just normal voices. Just what you hear.”

He saw that John was struggling to hide the disappointment on his face. “I had kind of counted on it staying. I mean, I don't know what I was thinking,” John said. “Guess I was exploiting you in some ways.”

“That was fine,” Sam said. “After I got a taste of it, I
wanted
to be exploited. God gave me the gift for a reason.”

John walked wearily back around his desk and dropped into his chair. “I really don't know what to think, Sam. Sometimes when I'm at a loss, the best thing to do is pray. Let's pray.”

Sam gratefully hunched over, and as they began to pray, he felt a sadness fall over him. He knew with a certainty that the gift would not return. The Lord had given it, and he had taken it away. When they'd said “amen,” John looked up at him, thoughts passing like shadows through his own eyes.

“Maybe the gift was just for a season, Sam. Let's not look at the removal of it as something to grieve about. Let's remember the joy while you had it. Maybe it was just to give you a glimpse of the urgency of the harvest.”

“Maybe so,” Sam said. “But it doesn't make it any easier.” His mouth twisted as he tried not to cry, and he covered his face. “I was getting used to winning people to Christ. The confidence I had when I could just walk up to someone and know what their needs were. Hear inside them, just like the Lord does. What am I gonna do now?”

“You don't have to quit,” John said. “You can still tell people about Jesus, just the way I do, and everybody else you taught does.”

“No,” Sam said. “I can't do it without that gift.”

John got up, came closer, and touched Sam's shoulder. “Go home and pray some more about this,” he said. “Ask the Lord to show you what to do. He will. That's what his words were about, Sam. He hasn't left you. He's going to be right there with you.”

But as Sam headed back out to his car, he felt very much alone.

15

S
AM DIDN'T MAKE ANY STOPS ON THE WAY HOME. HE pulled into the garage and quickly closed the door behind him, as if it could keep him from having to encounter anyone whose needs he couldn't hear. He went into the house and saw that Kate was up and dressed. She smiled hopefully at him.

“Where ya been?”

“I just went to the diner to eat,” he said.

She grinned. “How many?”

Tears sprang to his eyes, and he shook his head and headed toward the living room where he dropped into his recliner. Kate followed, the smile on her face fading. “What's the matter, Sam?”

“It's gone,” he said. “I can't do it anymore.”

“Do what?”

“I can't hear,” he said. “The gift is all gone. I went everywhere. I went to the diner; I went out on the street; I went to the bus station. I can't hear it anymore!”

Kate stood there a moment, dumbfounded. Then, frowning, she asked, “Didn't you say you had a dream last night?”

“Yes,” he said. “It must have been God's way of telling me it was over.”

“Wow.” She sank down onto the couch. “So . . . what are you gonna do?”

“Nothing. What
can
I do? I'm useless.”

She thought about that for a moment, then stood back up. “Wait a minute.
I'm
not useless, and I haven't been able to hear anybody's spiritual needs.”

“That's true,” he said, “but you knew what I could hear. We were a team—I gave you information. But I can't do it anymore.”

“No,” she said. “That was true of the first few, but after that I got a little more confident. You weren't involved in every single one. Some of them I talked to without you.”

“But let's face it,” he said. “We both had this false sense of security that I could read their thoughts and know what they were feeling.”

The telephone rang, and Kate stared at Sam for a moment, obviously processing his words. He could see that she was going to protest again, but instead, she picked up the phone. “Hello? Yeah, he's here. Just a minute.” She held the phone out to Sam. “It's Steve.”

“I don't want to talk to him. I'm too strung out here.”

“He already knows you're here,” she whispered.

Sighing heavily, Sam grabbed the phone. “Hello.”

“Sam, it's Steve. Listen, Joan and I went to the mall this morning, and there was this old man who'd been sitting on a bench all by himself, and I finally got up the nerve to approach him and start a conversation, and you're not gonna believe what happened.”

“What?”

“He accepted Christ. He's gonna come to church in the morning.”

Sam closed his eyes and smiled faintly. “That's good, Steve. That's great.”

“And I was just wondering, if you're not doing anything, why don't you come on over here? I'm gonna be here for a while. There are people everywhere. I thought you and I could—”

“No,” Sam cut in. “I can't.”

“Oh.” Steve sounded a little surprised. “Well, okay, that's fine, if you have another commitment.”

Sam shook his head. “Not another commitment, Steve. It's not that. It's just that—” He glanced up at Kate. Their eyes locked. He knew she was waiting to see what he was going to tell him. “It's just that I'm not feeling very well. I kind of have a . . . an ear problem.”

“That doesn't sound good. Well, don't worry about it, then. I'll just work on my courage. You know, I'm counting on having a ‘Let Us Rejoice' party every Friday night.”

Sam frowned. He couldn't see it happening. Not now, not without his gift. Things had changed.

“I'll just call Bill and Jeff and see if they want to come. They had a blast last night. It was like they suddenly dis-covered a talent they didn't know they had. Listen, you take care, okay? Hope you're feeling better by tomorrow.”

Sam hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment.

“Steve asked you to go with him to tell people about Jesus, and you turned him down?”

“Kate, didn't you hear me? It's over!”

The doorbell rang, and Kate headed for it. Moments later, John was in the doorway. “He lost the gift,” Kate was telling him, and John was nodding.

“I know. He came by the house and told me this morning.”

Sam began to rub his temples, but John came farther into the room and sat down opposite him. “You won't believe this.”

“Tell me,” Sam said, not very enthusiastically.

John leaned his elbows on his knees. “I've been getting calls this morning from some of the people in the evangelism class. The party last night got them all excited, and they're starting to feel more confident. They want to go out and talk to people after class tomorrow afternoon. Bill and Steve and Jeff told me to sign them up last night. I just wanted to let you know. I thought that might cheer you up, since you started all this.”

Sam shrugged. “I appreciate that. I guess the gift did a lot of good while it lasted.”

“But it didn't do you any good, did it?” Kate asked.

Irritated, Sam looked up at his wife. “What is that supposed to mean?”

“You're just gonna quit, like you can't mention the name Jesus without some supernatural gift. But none of the rest of us have it, and we can do it. There's still a harvest, Sam.”

“Hey, you didn't go out until I taught you how. Until I could feed you their thoughts.”

“Well, I've done it
without
knowing their thoughts,” she said. “I can do it again. I have the courage. Do you?”

John looked as if he'd gotten caught in the middle of a family squabble. Defeated, Sam sank back in his chair and said, “What do you want from me, John?”

“I just wanted to see if you would come to the class tomorrow. Go out with us. Help them get started.”

“Why me?”

“Because God touched you, Sam. He had a reason. He blessed you with revelations that the rest of us haven't had. You know things. And people respect you because you've succeeded.”

“Then how come I feel like a failure?”

“Because you're not looking at it with God's eyes.”

Sam stayed home from church the next morning, and Kate went alone. He didn't have the energy or the desire to go. But when she got back from church and told him that thirty-six people had professed Christ that day, he began to feel guilty for his attitude. “I'm going to the class this afternoon,” Kate said. “I wish you would go with me.”

He hadn't enjoyed spending Sunday morning in a dark living room, while his wife was worshiping without him. He knew he was being selfish. His brooding was only making him feel worse and was keeping him from the people who mattered most to him. “All right,” he said. “I'll go with you. But I'm only doing it to show you that this is not going to work.”

“It will work,” Kate said. “That gift taught you how to care about people. And I don't think your compassion will disappear just because your radar isn't picking up their thoughts anymore.” Her gaze softened as she touched his shoulders and looked into his eyes. “Tell me your compassion isn't gone, Sam. I liked being married to someone who cared.”

Sam wanted to tell her that he was still that person, but he wasn't sure he was. Would his zeal cool to a lukewarm level as it had been before? Would his heart grow hard again?

He turned away. Behind him, he heard her heavy sigh. “It's up to you, Sam. You had a two-week crash course in being like Jesus. Are you gonna throw that back in God's face?”

A million answers shot through Sam's mind, but he wasn't sure of any of them. He turned around and stared helplessly at her.

“I know how crushed you must be,” she said softly. “I'm kind of crushed myself. But God has his reasons, Sam. You have to trust him.”

“John wants me to keep being some kind of leader . . . to tell others how to win souls . . . to act like I know something they don't know. But I
don't
. Not anymore.”

Kate's eyes brimmed with tears. “Sam, don't you care about the lost coin anymore? Doesn't it matter to you?”

Sam couldn't take the sting of her words. He went to the kitchen and grabbed his keys off of the counter. “I've got to think,” he said. “I need to be alone. I'll just . . . meet you at the class.”

“Will you really be there?” she asked, sounding as if she didn't carry much hope that he really would. “Do you promise?”

He hesitated for a long moment, searching her face for the answers he couldn't find within himself. “I promise.”

Then, before she could probe deeper, he hurried to the car.

Sam drove around town for several hours, thinking and praying about the things that had happened to him. For the life of him, he couldn't understand the Lord's playing such a cruel trick on him. Why would he have thrust an unwanted gift on him, then taught him to cherish it, only to take it away? It didn't make sense.

He pulled up next to a park where children played, and he began to walk the path that wound through the trees. He found a bench in the shade and sat down as joggers ran by, their sneakers thudding on the concrete. On the playground just beyond the running path, children laughed and squealed, and dogs barked.

There was so much to hear, yet so little. It was all superficial now. He might as well be deaf.

He checked his watch and saw that it was time to head to the church. He had promised Kate, and he didn't like to break promises. He wondered if the class members would be able to see right through him. Wouldn't they know that something inside him had been snatched away? That he didn't have the “insights” anymore?

I want to hear like you do, Lord. I want to know what you know.

But as he ambled back to his car, he felt the hopeless, sick feeling that he would never come close to hearing like that again.

16

S
AM WAS STUNNED WHEN HE WALKED INTO THE classroom that afternoon and saw the number of people who had come to learn how to share their faith. He looked around and guessed that there were at least a hundred people there. Some baby Christians, some who'd been believers for years. Bill and Steve were bringing in extra chairs, and Sam joined in. At least he could do that, he thought.

When John finally got the class quiet, he searched the room. “Sam, would you come up here for a minute, please?”

Sam shot John a look that told him he was going too far. He set down the chairs he was carrying and moved to the front of the room.

“Sam, everybody here knows the success rate you've had in telling people about Christ,” John said. “It's inspired all of us. Now, you can see from the size of this class, the fruit that it's borne. And I wanted you to stand up here for a minute and tell people what your secret is.”