The Birthday Fish

I tried to refuse his offer, but to no avail. So I reluctantly sat down on one of the white plastic stools and he ordered fried fish and totopos for me. When they plunked the plate down in front of me, I turned to Mario and repeated what I had told him earlier, that normally when it is someone’s birthday it’s them that get treated to a meal, not the other way around. He waved me off and pushed the salsa my way. 

I could tell that his birthday was not going well. He should have been enjoying a nice meal with his family, but instead he had come here to eat fried fish by himself. Only after he had finished, did he see me and offer to buy me lunch. I could also smell the alcohol. 

I had known Mario for about a year. He lives close by so I would see him quite often. The first time I met him, he stepped inside our little storefront / outreach centre / office / church and asked me what kind of church we were. He had always expressed an interest in the deeper questions of life, but I got the sense he was looking for confirmation of his answers rather than in finding the right answers. But he was often willing to sit down and talk. Then he got a girlfriend across town and I saw him less frequently. 

I have always been pretty blunt with Mario. If he tells me how he admires Jesus I ask him why he doesn’t obey him. Usually he just smiles and doesn’t say anything. I think that deep down, Mario knows what he has to do, he just doesn’t want to surrender his life to Jesus. Mario’s not the only one. 

As I munched on the crunchy totopos, I turned to him and asked about his girlfriend. She left him. He drinks too much. I dipped the fried fish in the salsa and asked him what he was looking for in life. Peace. 

I did my best to explain that true peace is only found in one place, and as long as he was looking in other places he was never going to find it. Same as looking for Canada by heading south. Throughout my mini-sermon I kept pausing, trying to think of the correct Spanish word or phrase to use.

Mario’s pretty patient with me. But his heart remains resistant to surrender to Jesus Christ. And even if I had fluent, flawless Spanish there is nothing I could say to convince him that complete repentance and surrender to Jesus is worth it. That’s the Holy Spirit’s domain.   

As I thanked him for the meal and we parted ways, I thought about what it means to be prayerfully present. It’s easy for me to get stuck in my own work and preoccupy myself with how I can do more to reach people. But a large part of our Christian witness is simply displaying a Christ-like life – a life of grace, mercy, compassion. Such qualities invite in the hurting, the broken, the searching.

And then there is prayer. It sounds cliché to say that we need to remember to pray more, but it is never not true. Am I praying for God to give me opportunities to speak of the hope I have in Christ? Am I praying that the Spirit would move in the hearts of the people I engage with during the week? Too often I don’t – which is absurd because it is the most important part of my work.

Mario came to me because I was present, just hanging around the market. And I like to believe he came to me because he knows I care and he knows I will tell him the truth. I don’t know how long Mario will refuse surrender, but I am praying, when I remember to pray, that it won’t be long.