The Man in the Green Coat

I think that guy is homeless. I was watching a young man standing just beyond our group. He was wearing a green down-filled coat and a knit cap. At his feet lay a large black garbage bag.

On that cold October night, we were congregated on a corner downtown, listening to the Mission Syracuse Praise Band. Across the street rock fans were lined up waiting for a Marilyn Manson concert to begin. We had come to stage a counter demonstration of prayer and praise music. Young Manson fans, with their trademark white faces and black eyeliner, were a captive audience to the prayers and upbeat music across the street.

The green-coated man seemed to be enjoying our band. I had come to pray for the Manson rockers, but for some reason, this young guy intrigued me. Someone should talk to him. Not me—another man. But when no one seemed to notice him, I stepped closer.

“What do you think of the music?” I ventured.

“It’s just what I needed.” He smiled and told me he’d been headed out of town to Albany when something told him to come back. His name was Tom.

In the course of the conversation, I asked if he had a Bible. He did not. Wishing I’d brought one with me, I asked if he’d like one. Yes, he would. I figured out a plan. If he could meet me the next morning outside the Christian bookstore where I worked, I would bring him a Bible.

Later we directed Tom to the nearby Rescue Mission for overnight accommodations. Then we joined our group to “prayer walk” around the theater block.

“He’ll never show up,” my husband said, not wanting me to get my hopes up about Tom and the Bible.

“Pastor, where’s your faith?” my friend Kim shot back. “I’m going to pray with Jos that he does show up tomorrow.”

The next morning, I grabbed a Bible from church and prayed for Tom as I drove to work. Would he come? As I pulled into the parking lot, I thought I caught a glimpse of someone sitting at the picnic table outside our store. He was wearing a knit cap and a green jacket. It was Tom.

He was very glad to get the Bible. I shared some verses of encouragement with him and told him that no problem was too big for God. He could talk to Him wherever he went. After handing Tom some cookies and an envelope with a bit of money, I bid him goodbye.

Several years later, my friend Kim began working at an inner city daycare. It was not in a good part of town, but she felt called to minister there.

One evening, she had just locked the daycare doors. She turned to see a man in a torn green coat with rumpled hair, sitting on the grassy median in the parking lot near her car. He seemed rather dejected, his head down.

As Kim walked towards her car, he looked up. “Excuse me, Miss, would you happen to have a couple dollars for food?”

Kim had been approached before by drifters on the street. She knew to avoid the pushy types. Somehow, she sensed this man was really hungry and felt bad for him. Kim wondered how she’d feel in his situation.

“Yes, just a minute,” she answered, as she unlocked her car. She knew she had a few dollars in the ashtray. When she handed him the money, he said, “God bless you.”

“No, God bless you,” Kim countered. Then she remembered the Bibles in her trunk left from a children’s outreach ministry.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “I also have something even better than food. Would you like a Bible?”

“I have a Bible,” he answered.

“Where did you get it?” Kim asked without thinking.

The man told her he’d met a woman at a concert several years ago. She’d asked him the same question. She told him she would give him a Bible if he could meet her the next day outside a Christian bookstore where she worked.

Suddenly it all sounded unbelievably familiar to Kim.

“I know her!” she exploded. “That’s my pastor’s wife.” Kim had been there at that concert too. So this was Tom, nine years later!

“Have you been reading it?” she asked.

Yes, Tom had been reading his Bible. He was staying at the Rescue Mission and working on staying clean. He knew God was with him, helping him. He told Kim that he even read the Bible to others “to give them hope.”

Kim was so excited. She couldn’t wait to tell her pastor’s wife.

When Kim told me about meeting Tom, I couldn’t believe how God was allowing me to see the rest of the story. It was more than coincidence that, of all the buildings in the city of Syracuse, Tom just happened to stop at the one where my friend Kim worked, at the very moment she left work.

Often we have no idea what good, if any, comes from the small seeds we sow. I had responded to God’s nudge to offer Scripture to someone in need. Apparently, Tom had really appreciated it, because the Bible was still among his few treasured possessions years later. More importantly, he was reading it, finding help to change his life and hope to offer to others.

Who knows how the story will continue, perhaps through Tom’s life?

I felt privileged that God allowed me to see how those little nudges from Him are indeed very important to someone—even if it’s a homeless man in a green coat.