My Friend Celia

Today I got to see my friend Celia. She’s a tiny lady, seems to shrink a little more every time I see her. She lives in a government-subsidized apartment, way up on the 12th floor.

Celia has terrible back pain and knee problems; she only has one seeing eye, and the doctors have told her she’ll lose vision in that before long. Lately she’s been complaining of bad headaches, but she hasn’t let me take her to the doctor.

I don’t get to see Celia every week. Sometimes when I call it just rings and rings (she has no answering machine). And sometimes she will answer, but she says that she just can’t take the pain anymore, so she has gone to bed (even in the afternoon).

There are lots of things to pray about for Celia. But the thing I pray for most is that God will give her faith in Jesus.

Today I told her that our church is trying to memorize the Sermon on the Mount this year, little by little. She has heard of the Sermon on the Mount. She has heard of the Beatitudes too, but didn’t know much about them. I practiced saying them to her.

“What do you think that means, ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit’?” I asked her.

“Well, I supposed it means people like me,” she said.

I told there are two kinds of poor: people who are poor in money and possessions and people who know that there is nothing good in their hearts—they don’t have anything good inside to offer God—and knowing that about yourself is being poor in spirit.

“To be blessed means you’re happy; good comes to you,” I said. “And this says that you’re blessed if you know you can’t earn God’s favor, because you don’t have anything good inside yourself. That’s because if you think you’re good and you can earn God’s favor, you won’t take the way of escape that God made for you. Do you know what that is?”

“I suppose it’s being good, doing good things,” she said.

“It’s Jesus,” I said. And I explained (again) how God sent Jesus—who was God—to be a human and live perfectly. And when He died, He didn’t die because He sinned… He died so that He could pay for my sin.

“And when God asks why should I come to heaven, I don’t point to me, I point to Jesus—it’s because Jesus was perfect and took the penalty in my place. That’s the best news there is,” I said.

Well, Celia just said, “Hmh,” like she generally does. But she still let me pray for her before I left (which I generally do).

And I’d like to ask you to pray for Celia too, that God would give her a poor spirit and a rich inheritance in Jesus.