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    People tell me their life stories. They always have. That’s not brag. In fact, it’s not even anything to brag about. It just happens — people tell me their life stories. I don’t know why, it’s always been true. As a child, adults would unload their life stories on me. I guess my ears were so big, they seemed my most useful feature.

    Would you like to overhear a few of those stories? I have a million of them. I’ll share a few.

He was 87, with a felt hat pulled low, a jaw of Redman tobacco, and an old willow cane. His face was lined like an Arkansas roadmap, and his beard was a white stubble. He lived in a little old house in Perry, Oklahoma, and was glad to be there. I was distributing church bulletins, and he yelled at me to come sit a while. He’d been in a nursing home so bad it was nicknamed the Devil’s Den. People lay in their own filth. People got hurt. He clucked and laughed, and said Perry, Oklahoma is paradise compared to the Devil’s Den.

She was a single mom, twenty three years old, with an angelic four year old daughter. I was on the midnight Greyhound bus to Fort Worth, with a stop in Dallas. They lost my luggage that trip, an old leather suitcase with a bungee cord around it. Two empty seats in the whole bus, one by me, one behind me. I offered to move, she said no, her daughter could sit in the seat behind me, she needed someone to talk to. A story of abuse, of running away, of living on the bus for nearly a week going from coast to coast. I listened, gave her a little money, watched her daughter as she slept. I looked out the window at the lights going by in the cold North Texas night. I’d be home soon and rejoin the warmth of my little family. “She may never make it home!” I remember thinking to myself.

I’m sitting in a sunlit room in a mansion in one of the biggest cities in Texas. “I’m dying, Cary, and I don’t know if God is going to do anything about it.” Thirty years old, three precious little children, a Christian husband, both wealthy, from wealthy families. They live in a mansion. He’s a deacon, she leads Bible studies every week. She is absolutely gorgeous. He’s handsome. At first glance, they’re Ken and Barbie — not a care in the world and have it all?

    But she is diagnosed with cancer — terminal status almost guaranteed. “I’m not scared of dying, I’m scared of not being there with my kids... of someone else getting to see them grow up. You know what? My faith in God is stronger than ever.”

I had nothing to say in the presence of such faith.

    I stare at her, then look down at the sunbeams playing on the beautful oak floor of her sickroom. Nothing to say. Jesus came to help the lame walk, the blind to see, the dumb to speak. This time, Jesus struck the speaker dumb. I had nothing to say in the presence of such faith.

“I slept on the railroad tracks on Christmas Eve, hoping a train would hit me. I couldn’t even do that right!” I was twenty two, a new minister. He was about fifty, and life had given him a lot of trouble. We were in Beverley’s coffee shop in Oklahoma City. The place smelled like cigarettes and fried eggs... oh, and of course coffee. He was going through a divorce, a job loss, and his alcoholism was raging. “I went looking for my grown son, got lost, my car broke down, and I just laid on the train tracks, drunk, hoping to die. Can you give me a reason to live?”. I stared at my young reflection in the coffee cup, and took a deep breath. Good thing I was twenty two and knew everything.

He came in the church building, needing a little gas to get to Florida where the jobs were. Another scam? I don’t think so. He reiterated their story, a common one. They had a half-promise of a job in Florida. They were trying to get there, get a job, start a new life, asking for help along the way. We headed to a gas station, and I waited inside the station while he pumped some gas. The car was old, and four really dirty little kids were bouncing around the back seat. His little wife stood next to him as they pumped gas. Fort Worth is a long way from Florida. My eyes bulged as I look at the front of the car. The front front tire is a TEMPORARY SPARE TIRE, one of those little ones that fit in your trunk. They were going to drive on that to Florida. They wouldn’t make it out of town with that. How would they make it? As I watched, the wife smiled at her husband, he smiled back. I could read the words she mouthed under the poor, broke, sweltering, hot tarmac gas station Fort Worth summer sun...I love you. No money, they were rich.

    You want to know the truth? I LOVE to listen to life stories. People talk to me because I listen. There’s no magic in me; the magic is in the power of listening. You can listen too. You can be a story listener, a memory keeper, a walking vessel of remembrance of all the lives you’ve touched, of all the lives that have touched you. Let your heart be open to Jesus and His Story. It’s also my story, and your story too. Let your heart be open to others. It’s a little bit of heaven on earth to hear and be heard.

    Tell me your life story. I LOVE to listen. You story matters to me because you matter to God.

    Listen to someone else’s life story and safeguard someone’s significance.