Beyond Face Value
A compilation
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While moving to New York to work at a mission on the Lower East Side with my husband, I had made a detour through Boston while he went on ahead. After the bus pulled into the bus terminal in New York City, I stepped out on the street by a taxi stand, and realized it was getting dark. Fear began to set in as I hailed a taxi. When I gave the cabby the address of the mission, he asked gruffly, “Really?” He flicked on his meter and pulled away from the curb.
The analog meter seemed to spin faster than the tires as we inched our way through traffic. The fare displayed was rapidly approaching the amount of cash I had with me. I had thought when I jumped into the taxi that if I didn’t have enough money, I could run into the mission when we arrived and get the rest, but now I was having second thoughts.
I leaned over to get a better look at the driver in the glow of passing streetlights. His face had the hard, deep lines of an ex-con or a gang member. A very large scar went halfway around his neck. I flashed back to every creepy headline I’d ever read about cab drivers. I’ve made a horrible mistake!
Then I did something I should have done earlier. I prayed: God, I’m in a predicament! Please protect me, and show me if there’s anything I can do to help You get me safely to my destination.
The answer came clearly to my mind: Tell this man about Me. Before I could reason my way out of it, I took a deep breath and began:
“I need to make a confession. This taxi ride is costing more than I expected, and I don’t have enough money with me to pay for it. I’m on my way to a mission center, where my husband and I will be working. I’m not very familiar with New York, and I didn’t realize how long it would take. When we get there, I’ll have to run inside and get some more money. My husband and I try to live like Jesus did, preaching the gospel to everyone we meet, and we trust Him to supply our needs day by day.”
I went on to say, “Everyone needs to experience God’s love. He can heal every hurt, every heartache. He knows everything about us, and He loves us. Have you ever asked Jesus to come into your heart?”
There was a long, heavy silence, then a cough, then a sniff. I leaned forward and saw a tear roll down the cabby’s cheek.
“My grandma used to take me to church when I was a kid,” he said. “She would talk to me about Jesus. I even prayed with her. But then she died, and nobody has talked to me about Jesus since. You’re right. I need to be healed. I have led a horrible life. My grandma would be so ashamed of me for all the bad things I have done. I don’t think Jesus would forgive me now.”
It was my turn to choke back tears. “Jesus hung on the cross between two criminals. One of them asked for His forgiveness, and Jesus said, ‘This day you will be with Me in paradise.’ Jesus said that He didn’t come to preach to the good people or the people who thought they didn’t need His help. He preached to everyone—including the outcasts, the drunks and the prostitutes, the people who knew they needed Him. He will be there for you, too. All you have to do is ask Him to forgive you, and He will.”
I went on to say, “When we trust Him with our lives and accept that He knows what we need, He will answer our prayers in His perfect time.”
“Don’t worry about the money,” the cabby said. “I’ll take you wherever you need to go and pay for it myself. What you’re doing is really important, and the side of town you are going to is full of people who need to hear about heaven. I’ll pray more now, and I’ll try to be a better person. God sent you to me.”
We arrived at the mission, and he got out and helped me with my bags. I hugged him and told him Jesus would never fail him. He waited until someone came out to greet me, then he smiled and waved as he drove off.
When I pondered on this encounter, I realized that we had both been drawn closer to God and experienced His loving touch through it. God’s love never fails, and as we shine His love on others, we in turn experience His joy in our own lives. “Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, and running over” (Luke 6:38).—Joyce Suttin
In season and out of season
To say that Mick was a rough-looking character would be an understatement. He had long unkempt hair and beard, was missing fingers and teeth, wore numerous rings in his ears and elsewhere, and was covered in tattoos. My wife, Marianne, had gone to a local hospital to visit a friend. Mick and his girlfriend had been taken to the same hospital following a motorcycle accident in which they both suffered horrific injuries.
Marianne struck up a conversation, hoping to encourage Mick and point him to God in his time of suffering and distress. Mick was about to have his right leg amputated at the knee. Before the end of that first visit, Marianne gave Mick a gospel tract and prayed for him.
The next time Marianne and I visited, Mick was recovering from the amputation. We found him sitting up in his bed, broken in spirit. Moments later, a hospital caseworker brought news that further devastated Mick: His girlfriend’s parents had gotten an injunction to keep Mick from seeing her. He broke down crying, and we tried to comfort him.
Then Mick told us about his life. He had been born very hard of hearing in both ears. Some years later, he had been blinded in one eye by a bit of flying glass from a shattered windshield. He had left home at the age of 14 and had been jailed 17 times since then. He had been in almost every jail in Australia, he said matter-of-factly. His mother had committed suicide, and the rest of his family wanted little or no contact with him. We witnessed to him and left him some Christian literature to read.
Circumstances prevented us from visiting Mick again in the hospital. We wrote to him, but never received a reply. Two years passed, and Mick phoned. He had found a letter that Marianne had written him over two years before, and decided to try to call her. He had been in jail for nearly the entire time that had lapsed since we last saw him, as the court ruled that he had been at fault in the motorcycle accident.
We invited him to dinner at our home. Around the table, Mick shared with us more about his past—his heavy drug use, his times in jail, and riding with a motorcycle gang. He was a real character and made no attempt to cover up. What you saw was what you got! Eventually the conversation got deeper and turned to religion and the Bible. Mick affirmed that he believed there is a God.
We asked him if he would like to pray and ask Jesus into his heart. Mick thought for a moment, and then replied, “Yeah, okay.” He went on to pray, asking Jesus to forgive him for his past sin and wrongs, and to be his Lord and Savior.
We continued to see Mick, and to try to help him all we can, most importantly to come to know the Lord’s unconditional love for him, regardless of his past.
“People look at the outward appearance,” the Bible tells us, “but the Lord looks at the heart” (1 Samuel 16:7). God looked beyond Mick’s rough exterior, his criminal record, and all the hurt he had caused himself and others to see a repentant heart in need of the Savior.—Michael Lanagan
Someone is watching
While rushing to an appointment, I passed a scruffy beggar with a baby in her arms. It’s a common sight in Caracas, Venezuela, where this took place.
Give her something. I recognized Jesus’ voice speaking to my heart.
But she looks like she would spend it on drugs, I protested as I kept walking.
Well then, buy her some food.
Just then I came to a hot dog stand. I hurriedly ordered a hot dog and took it back to the woman. As I handed it to her, I told her that Jesus loved her and offered to pray for her. She accepted, and we bowed our heads and prayed right there on the street.
Several days later I stopped for a hot dog for myself at the same stand, but the vendor wouldn’t let me pay for it. “I saw what you did the other day,” he said. “You not only bought a hot dog for that homeless woman, but you also prayed with her. I’ve been on this spot for 15 years. Thousands of people pass my stand every day, but I had never seen that!”
Through this experience, I learned that others are watching when we share God’s love and reach out to help those in need, even in small ways. We can never know how far our witness may go or how God can use us to encourage others to do the same.—Kevin Sosa
Published on Anchor February 2026. Read by Lenore Welsh. Music by Michael Fogarty.
