His name was Todd. He was a red-headed fireball at a summer Bible camp that I taught in Missouri in 1977. I moved that summer and didn’t hear anything further from Todd until 1983. Today’s article is about that reunion and how God can take the tiniest of things to accomplish His will.
In 1983 I was a youth minister in Pueblo, Colorado and took a group of teens to Soul Quest at York Christian College in Nebraska. During a break I went to the student union to get a soft drink. While waiting in line the door burst open and a young man yelled, “Mike Sublett!” I turned around and was attacked with the biggest bear hug I’ve ever gotten. He finally relaxed his death grip hug, looked into my eyes and said, “You don’t have a clue who I am, do you?” Those moments are when you wish like everything that you could do a pictorial search of your brain. But Todd had changed so much that it wouldn’t have helped. So I replied, “Nope, sorry.”
About that time he opened his wallet and took out an orange string, a blue ribbon and an old worn out piece of paper with “me” written on it. The light came on and I exclaimed, “Todd, its you. Man, have you ever changed.”
We sat there and reminisced old times concerning that week during the summer of 1977. Since I had teens from my youth group at the event, I couldn’t stay for long. Just as I said that I had to go, Todd said, “But I must tell you something before you go.
“After camp that year I thought I would be strong and faithful to the Lord for the rest of my life. I thought I was invincible. But I wasn’t. I made a real mess of things for a couple of years. My life got so bad that I decided to end it all. I had the gun all ready. For some reason I decided to clean out my wallet before I ended it all. I didn’t know why; now I know that it was the Lord.
“When I pulled out all the stuff, the orange string, the blue ribbon and the piece of paper fell out. I hadn’t seen them in a long time. They took me right back to that life-changing summer. You gave us all the orange string and told us that it represented the wonderful week that we had shared and the promises of faithfulness that we had all made to Jesus and to each other. You gave us the blue ribbon so that we would be reminded that in God’s eyes we were all WINNERS. And you gave us that stupid piece of paper with “me” written on it and said that for the rest of our lives we would take a little part of you with us and that we’d better be careful where we took you and what we did with you there.
“That did it. God used the memories of that summer to wake me up. I broke down in tears and balled like a baby. Life has been different since that night. I’m here at York now and I’m going to be a preacher. I’ve always wanted to tell you but didn’t know where you were. That’s why I was so excited to see you. Thanks.”
By that time, we were both crying like babies in a place filled with everyone else laughing and horsing around. I wish I could tell you that I picked those 3 items out of my “deep relationship with God” or that “the Lord told me what to use”, but that would be a lie. About 30 minutes before class on Friday night I decided to put something in their hands and all that came from the craft supplies. You see, it’s not so important the size of what we do for Jesus, just that we be faithful. God can take the tiniest of things from our faithfulness and use them to do His mighty deeds in the lives of others. So get busy serving Jesus and then watch closely for what God just might do. And then give him the glory. God bless. Mike
