Here's Ed Crankshaft and his daughter Pam talking about her mother-in-law Rose, who looked at the addition Pam and her husband are building onto their house for Rose to live in and said, "So how's my prison coming?" Pam has been in a funk over this for several days, and here's Ed's comment.
People like Rose are often the most difficult ones to minister to. There doesn't seem to be any room for hope in their lives. No matter what you say or how you pray, there's always a reason it won't work. No matter how much you say that God loves them, they'll insist that you can't be talking about them. They'll amass all kinds of evidence and reasons why it can't be true, and why you're wasting your time trying.
Sometimes you feel like giving up. Sometimes you figure it's just not worth your time and effort. Sometimes you want to say "Even Jesus said there are times you shake the dust off your feet and move on." And sometimes, like Ed Crankshaft here, you just learn to live with them and not take it personally.
And sometimes, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, you keep going. By the gift of the Holy Spirit, you keep loving them. You keep inviting, you keep welcoming, you keep opening your arms. Like the Prodigal Father, you run out to the road multiple times everyday to look for them so you can welcome them home. And even though some of these Roses are only across the road and not completely out of sight, "across the road" is still a world away for them. You call and invite and plead, and they still don't come. It breaks your heart, you Prodigal Father, but you do it anyway because that's who you are called to be - that's who Jesus has made you to be.
And you keep doing it because when they do cross the road and come home, you know why the angels are rejoicing.
