One morning last week, my second counselor and I made a visit to a ward Primary leader. We were with her for about a half an hour and I shared a scripture and we prayed together before we said goodbye. As we walked to the car, I was feeling good until we saw the dog.
This large, unleashed dog saw us at the same moment that we saw him and he charged toward us to greet us. I have childhood trauma from mean dogs, and I never want to see a large dog running toward me, friendly or not. So, I was definitely not at my best when I saw this happy? savage? dog running straight for us. “I don’t like anything about this,” I said, and Barbara tried to divert the dog’s attention from me. (Bless her.)
But the owner of the dog was also there, unseen on his skateboard in the street. He ran over to fetch his friendly dog. Still, I hadn’t started breathing yet, and the fight-or-flight chemicals in my veins definitely continued to react.
But then I really looked at the young man. I recognized him! He had been on Tim’s ultimate Frisbee team before the pandemic. And in that moment I knew that I needed to be a friend to him.
I began where I was, flustered, not quite myself, and said, “I know you!”
And suddenly, I remembered his name, which was one that I hadn’t uttered in probably 5 years, and then we were having a surprisingly vulnerable conversation about church. Church!
When he said he wasn’t part of our church, the words, “That’s just fine, we love you all,” came out of my mouth. The young man swept back his hair and we talked for a few more minutes.
“Did I just tell this young man that we loved him?” was the shaming thought that came to my mind as we left the scene. But as more hours and days have passed, I have realized that the words I spoke were really not my own. I also remembered that some of my favorite stories of Jesus happened during unexpected meetings. The woman with an issue of blood was not his original focus or destination, and neither was the Samaritan woman, but these “scenes by the wayside” show his disciples the perfect pattern:
Take time to talk to someone. Be real. Offer hope. Share love. The people you meet by the wayside might just be the ones you are meant to talk to that day.