I went to Austin Pizza today with Andrew and Larry. We're sitting upstairs in a corner booth just eating pizza and talking with each other when the crazy homeless guy walks in and says hi to us, while sitting down at the table next to us. We said hi back and continued our conversation. Now, I don't usually talk to strangers but the guy wouldn't leave us alone and kept turning around and making friendly, albeit weird, comments.

This was a guy who was very ragged and unshaven. He wore a bandanna on his head underneath a construction cap. He was wearing a tie-dye t-shirt and carried his all belongings in the world in his one backpack. At one point he introduces himself to us as Rodney, telling us that today was his 53rd birthday and that he was waiting for a friend to come by and buy him a beer.

Now, I was enjoying my conversation with my friends here, and I'm thinking "this dood is a weirdo". He's talking with slurred speech and just talking about weird stuff. On top of that, he grabs two spoons and is sitting there clacking them away calling it "music". Anyways, Andrew was a lot more forgiving than I was. In fact, at one point he offers Rodney the last two pieces of pizza that we had. Rodney then sits down and starts talking to us as if we were his best friends. He told us about how he lived as a homeless Vietnam vet, wandering the streets, smoking marijuana, getting beat-up, sleeping in cemeteries, smoking marijuana. Many times I just busted out laughing because the stories he was telling were so outrageous.

But as the evening went on, I felt the need to share the Gospel with him, and I could tell in Andrew's eyes that he was thinking the same thing. I then began worrying about how I could bring it up with him, but then almost instantaneously, Rodney begins telling us about life and death, heaven and hell, God and the world! What an opportunity to talk about  spiritual matters!

Andrew and I tried to ask him some questions directly related to God and to heaven. In a very roundabout way, he'd answer the question and then move off on some weird tangent. At one point he's telling us about how he sleeps in graveyards at night because the dead bodies don't come out of the ground and rob you when you're sleeping. I started laughing and said, "HAHA, why are you telling us about this? What does sleeping in graveyards have to do with what we're talking about?" To which he answers as if I'm the dumbest person in the world,

"BECAUUUSE! We was talkin' about God and death!"

Oh right. My bad.

Anyways, we had talked about our guilt before a holy God and Rodney seemed to know what we were talking about, although he still felt at liberty to do whatever he wanted to do. But a million tangents later I really felt the need for him to hear the Gospel straight up. I asked him if I could share with him one last thing. Rodney said yes and stared at me intently. I took that opportunity to share about Jesus and what He did for us on the Cross. While he seemed to just nod in agreement, I asked him before we left to just consider eternity before he went to bed tonight (in a graveyard, maybe?)

Though I hadn't planned on meeting this guy here tonight, I'm glad that we did. I hope that that Truth will affect him tonight or at some point in his life.

Happy Birthday, Rodney.