I was at the nursing home yesterday visiting with my elderly father. We were sitting in the small lounge by the elevators when another resident and her Italian family came into the room. The resident’s mother had just returned from a trip to Rome and France where she visited the Vatican and the Marian Shrine at Lourdes. She said she “went into the cold water” in proxy for her daughter. She also visited the shrine of a “saint” who was her daughter’s namesake. She pinned a medal on her daughter, put holy water on her, and gave her a statue and a bracelet. All this was done to petition God for healing through the “Church”, “Mary”, “Saints”, and various objects. The items, the mother believed, held supernatural power.
When you have family in a nursing home for a long time you get to know the residents and their families pretty well, and a kind of bond forms because you share similar circumstances. Although I don’t see this particular family often, my heart immediately went out to them. All their petitioning to God and not one mention of Jesus. I could relate because that was me twenty years ago, in my very own Italian family, before I came to know the Lord Jesus Christ.
I’m usually not shy about witnessing but this time I found it difficult. All I kept thinking was how firmly entrenched this mother and family were in their beliefs. What could I say in the few short minutes we would share together to point them to precious Jesus. As I began to pray inwardly, the one and only Italian song that I know came to mind. By then all but one family member had left the room. The resident’s sister stayed behind and began talking to me about her father’s death, and how temporary life is on this earth. I talked about my mother’s death, and how I sang a song with her in Italian before she died. Then, there in the little lounge, I sang the song. I sang it in Italian, and then I sang it in English.
This is the song …
English:
JESUS DRAW ME CLOSE
Jesus draw me close, closer Lord to you
Let the world around me fade away
Jesus draw me close, closer Lord to you
For I desire to worship and obey
Italian:
GESU PORTA MI VICINO
Gesu porta mi vicino, piu vicino a te
Fa il mondo intorno andare via
Gesu porta mi vicino, piu vicino a te
Perche desidero adorare e ubbediere
So there it is, it happened again, the Lord put another Roman Catholic family in need of salvation before us. These are heaven and hell issues. Should we, born again believers in Jesus Christ, be supporting churches and pastors who aren’t valiant for truth. I know I can’t.
2 Corinthians 11:2-4 For I am jealous over you with godly jealousy: for I have espoused you to one husband, that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ. But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.
PEACEMAKERS 