text: She wanted to run up to the man on the park bench. She wanted to let him know that Jesus loved him. The day was picturesque October and Brachman Park was brimming with peoples afforded such an occasion, but this man in particular stood out in Shannon’s eyes. This elderly stranger sitting alone and unassuming was the one person in the whole world God has set aside for her to make a difference, she was sure of it. She felt a pang of guilt for cringing at his clothing, he wore layers of rags, each colored a different shade of mud. Would there be enough room for him and his bag on the church bus, she wondered. Sure, they couldn’t possibly take him all the way home to Nebraska, but here in Montana, there had to be something she could do for him. His hair and skin seemed so brittle, it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. Still, he had a face that seemed alert, intelligent even. Shannon scrunched her own and decided that the man on the park bench could carry an entire conversation if he wanted. Being as old as he was, it was a certainty that he knew a thousand facts. Maybe he could tell her all about war and the depression and the industrial revolution. Then she could certainly be informed enough to see things from his point of view, to really bless his journey. She just hopped that he wasn’t drunk. She looked on as he lifted a brown paper bag up to his lips for more than a moment. She shuddered and stretched out the muscles in her neck. Despite her fear that hesitation would be taken for disbelief in the eyes of the Lord, she could not immediately find the nerve to approach this stranger. He wasn’t even a stranger really when you thought about it. We are all children of God, that makes us a spiritual family, stronger than blood. It says in the bible. All she had to do was walk up to the man, sit down and explain how the love of Jesus Christ could change his life if only he would let it. “Well, Shannon, what are you waiting for? Is this the man you were talking about on the bus ride up here?” Diana gave one sixteenth of a smirk sideways to her clique mates, “You did say that God actually spoke to you?” “Diana, where did you come from?” Shannon had spun to see three other girls from Sand Valley Christian Church Youth Mission Division. “Pastor Jayden told me to tell all the girls that everyone is meeting back at the bus at 6:35 to get Chinese.” “Oh, Okay, thank you.” Shannon smiled. She had absolutely no choice but to be entirely pleasant to these girls, an authoritiv voice in her head demanded it. Since entering 9th grade and subsequently moving up to youth group for high school students, she spent a portion of each Sunday morning and each Wednesday night examining what she could have done that might cause Diana and her friends to be so rude. It was not until recently that she began to think maybe there was nothing she could have done this whole time to be their friends. “So, what does God sound like?” one of the girls asked. Before Shannon could formulate a response, the three girls doubled over each other in laugher. “Come on,” Diana said, “We still have a half hour, let’s go back to the soccer field we saw those boys stretching!” then they were off. Shannon watched as they laughed and disappeared, although they were never really gone. She had thought maybe the same chemicals in your brain that make you like boys also make you less able to be nice. It was then she realized that the man that God had placed in her life for her to convert to Christianity was no longer to be seen. Pulling her cardigan tight to combat the sudden cold, she walked quickly across the park’s brick hub. She looked back and forth between the large twin water fountains, recently retired, and scanned the faces in the thinning afternoon crowd. Using her hand to block the sun, she spotted the concrete path that wrapped around the man-made lake. There she spied the old man hobbling through a gaggle of geese on the far side. His pace didn’t add up to how he had gotten so far in such a short time. She started off around to the far side, meaning to meet him head on from the other direction and land somewhere by the ice cream truck she had spied when the church bus had first driven round the park. She could not move as fast as she would like ever since running started hurting her breasts, still, she hustled on. She ducked three different fisbees before finally reaching the other end of the pedestrian path only to find a tall chain-link gate barring the way. There hung a sign reading |Closed for season Oct. 1st - Mar. 31st| Nervously, she took off and reapplied her broad, white headband, pulling her thick wavy hair away from her face. Off to the right she spied a foot trail leading into the woods, which was a detour to the other side, she was certain. Glancing at her watch, it suddenly felt heavy, like it was pulling her into the ground. She had no choice but to step into the shadows of the overgrown trail, or drown in the mud where she stood. The winding dirt path was as wild as it was narrow and every ten feet or so, Shannon used the tip of her white sneakers to draw a circle in the bed of pine needles. The path turned left, the direction she was hoped it lead, before suddenly banking hard right and opening up at the far ending of a near vacant parking lot. Six minutes left. “Excuse me, sir.” She practiced out loud and skirt the lot, north. “Sir, I was wondering if you would like to talk about Jesus? How would you like to live forever?” She had reached the road just a busload of her Christian friends ground to a halt in a cloud of gravel dust on the side of the road. Shannon’s lungs ached. Pastor Jayden sprang out the double doors. “C’mon kiddo, we gotta go. Dinner is getting cold.” He slapped the side of the bus, twice. No, no, no, no, no! She still time to find the man in rags. Didn’t God create time? “Pastor Jayden I have to talk to you, it’s really important!” she plead. The weight of Diana’s gaze from the window above struck Shannon a blow that literally knocked her backwards. She grabbed her pastor by the hand and drew him a number of feet away from the bus. She quickly and passionately made her case as to why he should postpone dinner, for Christ sakes, and help her find the man in rags, the same man God had showed her in a vision along I-80 three nights ago. “Okayokayokay.” He pulled the girl in for a hug when he saw tears falling onto the front of her baggy, Little Mermaid sweatshirt. “C’mon, let’s go find him. And you can practice your street ministering skills.” He darted back to the bus and spoke inaudibly to the driver, chaperone Gil. Then Shannon Heard the pastor make a muffled declaration to the rest of the bus, followed by an uproar of hungry teenagers. It took firm resolve on her part to resist eye contact with Diana at that moment. Pastor Jayden was back at her side then, ushering her down the road, the way the bus had come. During the walk back to the park entrance, Shannon’s mind slowly sank from the heights of jubilant faith, down toward the muck of dejection. Doubts and hesitation flip flopped around her thoughts like hundreds of fish out of water. Her legs became heavier with every step as a stranger inside herself began hope that they never found the man in rags. She suddenly realized her pastor was talking. He spoke about the importance of evangelism and the sacred duty of Christians to share the gospel. She nodded her head along to his words. “Faith without works is dead.” He said as a fact. Her shadow was stretched out in front of her, egging her on. Its direction was pulling her toward conclusion while its length highlighted the inconvenience she was causing her church mates. “You know, I’m actually very hungry. Maybe we sh-“ The pastor cut her off, “Whoa, kiddo. This is the type of thing that if you don’t see though until the end, it can haunt you for a long time.” He formed his face into a fleshy grin and placed a heavy hand on Shannon’s shoulder. She knew he was right. Finally, the man and the girl reached the entrance to the park, just as she rounded the wall off shrubbery giving way to the hub, her heart sank to her toes. She left step with her pastor and ran toward a group of park goes gathered around an upturned ice cream cart. The people where murmuring among themselves while two police officers were taking the report of an irate, middle aged, South American man. “I saw him from 30 feet away,” he was telling the officers, “I told that old man ‘HEY, old man! Take your drunkenness away from here. You are scarring away my cus’imers!’ Then before I knew it, the old man runs head first into my cart! Just like a football player! Look at all this loss! Who is going to pay for all this loss?” he demanded of the officers. Shannon sat with quivering wet eyes as she watched from a distance as the two officers hauled the man in rags up to his feet and into the cruiser that had been driven right into the park. The large red bump on his forehead had seemingly sucked all the life and light from his eyes, because in the moment, the man wore a different face than the man God had shown her three nights ago. That night, while reading her bible by flashlight in the last row of the bus, the others slept right through her angelic visitation. There before her mind’s eye was the man in rags with the face of white stone. This was not that man anymore. The last of the suns warmth disappeared over the tree line and the Midwest park became the coldest place in the world. It was full dark by the time Shannon and pastor Jayden made it back to the bus. she was thankful no one bothered to ask her any questions as she made her way back to her customary row. One of Diana’s ex boyfriends was sprawling across an entire bench, rapping under his breath, leaving only sitting room beside a not-unfriendly looking boy, to whom she had never spoken and who’s name she didn’t know. “Did you resolve your spiritual emergency?” the boy with the red hair and red hat asked after about 10 minutes. Instead of answering him she simply hunched her back, pulled the collar of her sweatshirt up to her forehead, and gazed at her belly button. He didn’t say anything but she could still feel his strange eyes.