By Dawn Husnick

We found this article here. Thanks, Dawn, for letting us repost your wonderful story! It really captures for me the heart and essence of the ordinary attempt (ordinary for YOU, anyway!)

In my years in the ER, I saw Jesus daily doing His Kingdom work in and through a group of His followers. It was a true expression of the church. One day stands out beyond all the others and left me radically changed forever. It was the day I saw Jesus face to face.

‘Give us hearts as servants’…was the song they were singing as I left the church service heading off for my second 12 hour shift in row. Weekends in the ER can be absolutely brutal! I was physically and emotionally spent as I walked up to the employee entrance. The sound of ambulances and an approaching medical helicopter were telltale signs that I would be literally, hitting the ground running.

“Dawn…can you lock down room 15?” yelled out my charge nurse as I crawled up to the nurse’s station. (When someone asked for a lock down it was usually a psychiatric or combative case). Two security guards stood outside the room, biceps flexing like bouncers anticipating a drunken brawl. My eyes rolled as I walked past them into the room to set up.

The last lock clicked into place as the masked medics arrived with Joe strapped and restrained to their cart. The hallway cleared with heads turned away in disgust at the smell surrounding them. They entered the room and I could see Joe with his feet hung over the edge of the cart covered with plastic bags tightly taped around the ankles. The ER doctor quickly examined Joe while we settled him in. Read the rest of this entry »

He was sitting outside the drugstore one day when I came to pick up my medications.  His hair was a matte of thick dredlocks, his clothes were gray with a layer of dirt, and his teeth were crusted with layers of rot.  He held a cardboard sign that said, “Homeless.  Anything helps.”  I’d say that he was probably only in his thirties. 

I decided to take a detour and ask him if I could get him anything. He asked for a liter of Pepsi and some Doritos.  I went in and picked out the Doritos, but the mother in me couldn’t stand the idea of feeding him with junk food and couldn’t resist the temptation of adding a turkey sandwich.  I handed him the bag, threw a brief “God Bless” at him and got back into the safety of minivan.

Even so, I knew that I hadn’t done anything of real value.  It nagged at me that I had just slung a bag of goodies at him and hadn’t connected in any real way.  I decided then and there that if I ever saw him again, I would ask him his name. 

Read the rest of this entry »

by Ken Sweers

Immanuel Reformed Church, Grand Rapids, MI

Our Wednesday night children’s program here breaks a group of about 50 kids into ‘huddles’ of 5-7 kids each. This year while serving as a ‘huddle leader’, a couple of unchurched kid’s that mentors from our church have been working with ended up in my huddle. We recently organized a group that just began prayer-walking neighborhoods while utilizing the OA methods as we walk. I was in the group that was walking through the neighborhood of these two particular boys. It is a very marginalized neighborhood. The older of the two, a fifth-grader, was playing outside his house. I knew from the relationship that I had built with him that he lives in a paternal single-parent home and the conditions there are less than desirable. When he saw me he ran up to me and greeted me. “Hey Mr. Sweers, what are you doing here?” I told him that we were walking the neighborhoods to pray to God to come and fix things that needed fixing.

“What do you think needs fixing?” I asked. Read the rest of this entry »