A NEIGHBOR ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORLD
Pastor David Jeremiah tells a story about Bob Pierce.
Pierce had advanced leukemia. But he went to visit a friend in Indonesia before he died. As they were walking through a small village, they came upon a young girl lying on a bamboo mat next to a river. She was dying of cancer. And she only had a short time to live.
Bob was upset. He said, "Why isn’t she in a clinic? Why
isn’t someone taking care of her?" But his friend explained that she was from the jungle. And she wished to spend her last days next to the river, where it was cool and familiar.
As Bob gazed at her, he felt such compassion that he got
down on his knees in the mud, took her hand, and began
stroking it. Although she didn’t understand him, he prayed for her.
Afterward she looked up and said something. "What did she
say?" Bob asked his friend.
His friend replied, "She said, ’If I could only sleep again, if I could only sleep again.’"
Bob began to weep. Then he reached into his pocket and
took out his own sleeping pills, the ones his doctor had given him because the pain from his leukemia was too great for him to sleep at night.
He handed the bottle to his friend. "You make sure this
young lady gets a good night’s sleep," he said, "as long as these pills last."
Bob was ten days
...