Who's Hearing the Gospel In Room 224?

During Doug's last hospital visit, the kids and I visited him after lunch one day.  The nurse came in to check on Doug and asked if our kids had a snow day that day, since they were at the hospital during "school hours."  When I told her we home school, she was full of questions.  She had been thinking of homeschooling her son because he was being bullied at his public school.  We began talking about our reasons for homeschooling and how God nudged us down that path.  Instantly, I could tell she was offended by my faith and my reasons for homeschooling.

A few sentences later, she revealed that she grew up attending a Catholic school and had read the Bible, but she had abandoned her faith years ago.  I began to encourage her to change her heart, when she got a page from another nurse and had to leave, but she assured me she'd be right back.  After she stepped out, my husband said that he'd already tried to talk to her and she shut him down and she was going to feel "attacked."  

Doug and I exchanged a few sort-of-not-nice words with one another about obedience to God and our faith.  Our boys, who had said nothing until then, chimed in with their observations.  They began talking about how you could "feel" the Holy Spirit when we were talking to this nurse.  They compared it to a movie and kept wondering what we were going to say next. They are at an age where they are intrigued by wars, battles, and the fights between good and evil, making this conversation between the nurse and I extremely interesting to them. If nothing else, I was glad that my three children were experiencing firsthand how not everyone will be receptive to us as Christians and not everyone will choose Jesus.  I think my husband had the same thoughts.

When the nurse returned, my husband, who moments earlier said my words sounded attacking and harsh, pretty much threw a spiritual brick at her head.  She explained how she's a "spiritual" person and is raising her kids to have good morals and values and is a nurse because it's what God wants her to do.  Before I could say anything, Doug blurts out, "Well, that's good and all, but you need Jesus Christ" and proceeded to explain how God sent his son, Jesus, to die for our sins.  This is where I'd like to say that she accepted Jesus right then and there and her life will be forever changed.  Instead, she said she didn't have time to talk about this anymore and had to tend to another patient.

This experience was not new to neither Doug nor I, but to my children this was baffling.  Why didn't she want to hear more, to know more about Jesus?  They couldn't understand, after hearing about God's love for someone, how that person could not immediately be affected.  The Bible talks about child-like faith and I love that I have three examples of this in front of me nearly all of the time.  What a great reminder! There are times when I share my faith with someone when I wonder exactly who it is I am witnessing to.  At the time, I thought it was the nurse.  Looking back, it was really my children.  It would have been wonderful for them to see this heart-broken woman turn to Christ.  But they learned more in that half-hour of overhearing our conversation than I had taught them all morning using our highly-rated homeschooling curriculum!