Out of Place: I was sitting in church one day as I was listening to a sister who came to the pulpit. She started to say that gang members ...
Out of Place: I was sitting in church one day as I was listening to a sister who came to the pulpit. She started to say that gang members wanted to join her two sons into their gangs.
I had just joined the service and I looked around and noticed everyone wearing suits and ties but as for me I had a bald head and big pants and tattoos across my neck. I stood up and left the congregation because I felt out of place. I was five blocks away and a sister came running towards me saying, “Omar, Omar, Jesus loves you. Don’t leave the path of God.” I turned around, looked at her and said, “What are you doing here? Are you crazy or what? Come on, I’m going to take you back.” As I was taking her back she started to tell me, “I know what its like because of what you look like and where you come from… but don’t leave the path of God. Jesus loves you.”
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| Out Of Place In The Church |
She told me that she too also had been on the streets taking drugs and in gangs and in and out of jail. “But don’t leave the path of God. Jesus loves you.” As I was walking her back to the church she had her baby held in her arms and she said, “I am going to pray for you.” As she started to pray I was walking on the side of the street and she on the side walk. I was looking down and listening to her prayer and a few seconds later she suddenly grabbed me as a bus whizzed by.
The bus almost ran me over. I tried thanking her but she responded, “It wasn’t me. It was Jesus.” I tried to hug her and thank her but she said again, “It wasn’t me. It was Jesus.” I sat down on the floor and had tears in my eyes and thought to myself, “I should have been smashed or thrown fifty feet in the air. I should be in hell right now.” My mind was running fast over what just happened. Later I was reading a passage from the Bible which says, “My brothers, if one of you should wander from the truth and someone should bring him back, remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins… (James 5:19-20). And that’s me. The verse applies to me.
