Based on a true story.
Pete, Joe and Mike openly mocked when Stan came into their hospital
ward.
“Hey, Doug,” Joe called. “Yer
old man is here. Do you think he’s gonna preach a sermon today?”
Doug glowered towards the door,
but dropped his eyes when Stan appeared.
He muttered a few curses but
managed to add “Hi, Dad,” when the tall, thin man sat down stiffly beside him.
Doug sighed inwardly: another hour of enduring his father’s obvious
discomfort with how his fellow Aids patients acted up. He knew without a doubt
their actions were more unnatural, their language filthier when he came around.
Doug
sighed, again. Why couldn’t he just bug off?
Just because I’m his son and dying of
this creepy disease is no reason for him to stick around.
“You, okay, son?”
“Same as usual: no better, no
worse,” he lied, although he knew perfectly well his life was ebbing out of
him.
“Is there anything I can do to help?”
Stan sat with his hands tightly folded on his lap and Doug, as well as several
others took note of the look of revulsion on his features.
Ya, Doug thought, just once you can get that awful nauseated look off your face and treat
me like a human.
What he didn’t know, however, was how
desperately Stan was praying for compassion, for understanding towards these
people.
But one day Stan was different.
He was still quiet and dignified, but he spoke to them with respect, and by
name! He ever shook their hands when he greeted them. The assortment of men viewed him with wary
surprise.
Stan continued to visit his son
on a daily basis, and the men sensed that Stan was different, that he really
did care about them. First one then another responded to the obvious love they
felt from him, and some even started unburdening their hearts.
It was a happy day when Doug,
who had always been a wayward boy, broke down and confessed a fear of dying.
“Dad,” he wept, “I need Jesus,
but I’m so afraid He won’t accept me because I have sinned so badly."
While the others listened in,
Stan convinced his son that it was for people such as Doug that Jesus had laid
down His life.
Doug made such a complete change,
and was so obviously at peace with God and man after he confessed his sins, that
no one tried to dissuade him. It was
considered unusual how peacefully he died under the circumstances.
Both the hospital staff and the
patients were deeply impressed with the caring Stan showed, but Jesus helped
him.
