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By Pastor Don Nagy

“I had just finished my very first week as a youth pastor and I decided to take my family on a trip to see great grandma. On the way there, I witnessed a terrible accident.

A woman on a motor scooter was a few hundred yards ahead of us (heading down hill) when she suddenly lost control of the scooter, started zig-zagging and swerving all over the road, and finally flipped the scooter.

She and the scooter bounced and rolled down the road and I quickly pulled over to the side of the road to help. My wife ran into a nearby gas-station to call 911 and I tried my best to tend to the woman.

She was not in good shape. She was not wearing a helmet and was bleeding all over. Another man joined me at the scene and we began to direct traffic and tried to comfort the woman as much as possible. I prayed with her, and for her, as we awaited help which came very quickly.

As rescue workers began to arrive, my role was quickly reduced to by-stander. As I stood watching, I noticed a teenaged boy sobbing on the other side of the road. I made my way over the boy and started talking with him and found out that it was his scooter that had flipped. <?p>

Apparently, he had let this woman borrow it for a ride but she had some severe cognitive developmental issues and he knew that he probably shouldn’t have let her ride it. He was distraught with guilt, remorse, fear, and sorrow. He was clearly shaken.

I talked and prayed with him for a bit before the police made their way over to the boy for questioning. The scene was quickly cleaned up, the woman was taken away in an ambulance, and there was nothing left for me to do now but continue the drive to great grandma’s house.

A few minutes into the drive, I was struck with this startling thought: “I have no idea how this story is going to end!”

I had no idea who the boy was, I had no idea who the woman was, I had no idea where they had taken her, and I didn’t even know what town I was in! I would probably never see any of them again and I would have no way of knowing how their stories had played out.

It was then that I almost audibly heard God say “Welcome to ministry. You may not always get to hear the end of each story. You may not always know the impact of your actions. You might never get to see all of the results, or find out what happens next, or hear how these lives turn out. Your job is just to be faithful and minister to the needs that I bring your way.”

That is our call as servants of Jesus. To be faithful. Always. Everywhere. And to leave the rest in God’s very capable and loving hands.