We can never tell the impact we have on others

Yesterday I received a lovely phone call. It was from a former colleague, who works in the Pastoral Care Dept at Peter Mac, who I became friends with when I was doing my CPE placement there.

Whilst it was pleasant enough that he rang to say hello, see how I was going, and to tell me that I am missed in the department, the thing that really struck me was his report of an encounter he had with a patient recently.

He said this patient, an older lady, told him that on her last visit to the hospital she had met me, and had really appreciated the contact I had had with her and her husband. In singing my praises to this other pastoral carer, she said that the most impressive thing was that I got her husband to cry. Apparently her husband is a big, strong man, and prior to his meeting me, he had never cried in his life.

I was quite chuffed to hear this (and surprised, because this had obviously been a very memorable encounter for the patient and her husband, but I had no recollection of the specific event- Peter Mac is the kind of place where lots of people get a bit teary when talking about what they're going through, and I just didn't realise that for this man, his tears were so significant.)

So now I have to live with the grave responsibility of having the super power of being able to make very tough, grown men cry. Whilst I can think of many occasions when such a super power could come in very handy indeed, I promise to only use this power for good (and also for God, which almost got through as a typo just then!). So the tough males of my acquaintance can breathe a sigh of relief!

But seriously folks, I really was quite delighted to receive this feedback, as it was very gratifying to learn that my ministry had been so helpful to these people, even though I didn't realise it at the time. But in addition to this, it was also quite sobering and encouraging to realise that although so much of the work we do for the Kingdom doesn't bear fruit that we can see... this doesn't mean it doesn't bear fruit at all.