Reflections of Grace

Week of June 7

One Woman’s Journey From Complacency to Conviction

“Rich and poor have this in common: The Lord is the Maker of them all.” Proverbs 22:2


I have been a believer in Jesus since I was a little child. Now, as a maturing Christian, I have chosen to be in living relationship with Him. I have found there is a big difference between the two.

I would like to testify to a short but very intense awakening. These events and the reactions they aroused in me are real. They brought me to my knees in tears of repentance. My soul fought battles between submission to the Light and my own dark desire to be the director of my life. Through it all I have learned a little more about God’s love for His wayward children.

Let me begin...

In late April, 1999, I took a one-week business trip to Minneapolis, Minnesota. I was attending a company-sponsored technical fair in which I would demonstrate our team’s newest Internet initiative. The fair was a huge success. We generated a lot of interest and our product was favorably received. After the fair, the vice president on our team offered to take us all out for a dinner. While some of the folks left to drop their PCs in their rooms the rest of us waited outside.

The weather that evening was perfect. The sun had set about an hour earlier, This is the picture I would like you to see through my words. Envision a group of white, upper-middle-class men and women standing on a Minneapolis sidewalk laughing and talking. Suddenly a stranger walks into their midst. He is a poor man—a poor, disabled black man—and he is drunk. Not mean or sloppily drunk, but happily so.

Immediately the mood of our group changes, but the man does not seem to notice. He comments on the beauty of the night and begins a plea for money to take his children to a movie. Someone in the group rejected his request while the rest of us shifted uneasily. Throughout this I was feeling very uncomfortable because I knew I should have been standing separate from my peers by respecting this person’s humanity. I knew what I should be doing, but I didn’t do it because I was afraid that my “friends” would reject me,that they would think me odd.
The man accepted the rebuff with good grace, and then he did something extraordinary. He asked if he could pray for us. Someone in the group said
they did not want a prayer, but he stood in our circle, bowed his head and prayed anyway. He asked God to watch over us and our families. He called us beautiful, although I felt anything but beautiful by then. He closed his prayer with a joyful amen, which I echoed quietly and then our eyes caught and held for just a moment before he turned and made his way up the hill along the well-lit path. As for me and my group, we turned off the path onto a darkened side street, making our way to the restaurant for a well-earned dinner.

The next morning I woke up feeling ill physically, emotionally and spiritually. Sometime during the night, I had been convicted of my own careless disregard for one of God’s beloved children. I spent that morning alone in my room, on my knees before God in tears of repentance. I remember feeling completely alone, so far away from the people who knew me and loved me.

As I sobbed in my misery, I “heard” the gentle voice of the Shepherd. “I am here.” Peace flooded through me, and the sobs became gentle, cleansing tears as I knelt by the bed and allowed myself to finally understand God’s grace.

I had sinned. I am the person who meets God unable to say that I had fed Him when He was hungry and clothed Him when He was naked. Despite this I am loved, forgiven and still oh-so-valuable to the Creator. This is grace.

Two weeks later my husband and I traveled to London for our delayed (by 16 years) honeymoon. Sometime toward the middle of the week, I had an incredible urge for spaghetti and sauce. Finding southern Italian cooking in London is a bit of a challenge, but I had my mind set, so my husband and I began searching for my definition of an Italian restaurant.

We had been searching for over an hour, and it was after eight in the evening as we entered the Underground to catch a train. I was tired, hungry, frustrated and feeling very sorry for myself when I turned a corner and stopped in my tracks. Directly across from me a homeless young man was settling in for the night. He was dirty, skinny and sick. He slid his back down against the wall of the station and pulled a filthy, tattered blanket up to his chin. He had a dog, as dirty and underfed as he was, that gently climbed into his lap for the night.

I stood there in silence with the people of London rushing all around me. It seemed I could see Jesus with His arms outstretched in the shadows behind the pair. The story of The Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16:19-31) came to my mind. I am the rich man. I have never known a moment of real need or total abandonment in my life, I have always been loved, yet I was upset because I couldn’t find a restaurant that served red tomato sauce. Tears came into my eyes and my heart was humbled once again. Grace.

Back in Connecticut three weeks later, I was asked to travel to New York City to do a presentation. I decided to incorporate a walk to the train station into my lunch hour. It was my habit to pray daily at the Church of St. Patrick/ St. Anthony, so I decided to do that at noon, also.

As I stepped out of the train station, I could see that there was a poor woman begging on the corner and that I would have to walk past her. I was immediately enveloped in a terrible and stubborn frame of mind and I decided before I even stepped off the train station steps that I was not going to help her. I put my head down and watched my own feet, determined not to see her. She saw me, though, and I heard her call after me, “Please, Miss.” Five times she called and with each cry for help I became more determined not to hear her.

Halfway up the street I stopped. There was a war between good and evil going on inside me. “Go back,” whispered Love. “No!” shouted fear. I started walking again.
Three quarters of the way and I stopped again. “You know you need to go back and help her.” Love’s voice was soft but impossible to ignore.

I turned and started back toward the woman. “Stop!” shouted fear stridently, “You don’t need to do this. She’ll want something from you. Who knows where it will lead!” Fear gripped me and I turned away once more.

I made my way to the corner and stopped to hear Love’s last plea. “Melina, you know you need to go back. You cannot ignore this. You chose to listen to fear in Minnesota and it made you sick. Will you choose fear over Love again?”

I knew what I had to do—I had known it all along. My fear was really my ego, which never wants to submit to God and His will for me. I turned and walked back down the street. She was still on the corner, but her back was to me and I could have left
unnoticed. Instead I asked, “What is it?”

She turned with a questioning look on her face, “What?” she asked.

“What is it?” I repeated. “You called me and I ignored you, but I came back.

“I’m hungry,” she answered, “and I have no money. Could you give me some money for lunch?” I looked at her closely. She was young, maybe 21 or 22 and her face was scarred by what looked like a knife wound.

I handed her a five-dollar bill as I said, “God bless you.” At those words she looked up at me for the first time. “Will you pray for me?” she asked.

“Yes, I am going to the church to pray now. What’s your name?”

“Denise. My name is Denise. Thank you,” she replied, and we parted ways.

I walked to the church with a million questions running through my head and tears running down my face. I walked into the hushed body of the church and knelt in a pew. I prayed for Denise and then I directed my questions to God, “What is it? What do you want of me?” No answer, just the muted sounds of the street. I knelt in silence for some time and left with no answers, but my heart was quiet.

I did go and get lunch and as I was returning to the Gold Building I was holding a conversation with God in my head.


“Lord, I need a mentor, someone who can tell me what I should do.”

The quiet voice of the Shepherd answered me: “I’ll be your Teacher.”

“I know,” I replied. “But I want someone I can look at and touch.”

“Your heart knows Me and I touch you there,” came the gentle response.

“Yes, I know, thank You.” I smiled as I walked, knowing that I had heard the Truth.

Suddenly a young woman holding a child by the hand approached me. She stopped right in front of me, said “God bless you and your family,” handed me a slip of paper and walked away. I looked down at the paper—it was a religious tract. At the top in large bold letters it read, “Jesus loves you!” Grace.

Melina Rudman
Rocky Hill, Connecticut

Copyright Thanks Be, First Church of Christ, Wethersfield, Ct.