A friend of mine called me one night to tell me that he had just been diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, we talked for quite some time and my mind was thinking “how do I answer him? how do you reply to news like that”, I told him I know you don’t believe in God but I do and told him a brief story of Padre Pio and that I knew a person who had his mitt and would he like me to get it for him and bless him. My friend was born a protestant and knew nothing about our faith, we never talked to each other about God and I knew from some of his remarks that he would be a bordering atheist, he replied I don’t do God mate. I decided to pray hard for him, during that time also me and my family had bent dealt a very hard blow an attack from satan to put it lightly and had to move from our home very quickly, so I kept in contact with him as best I could, he is a very deep kind of person who doesn’t show feelings and gets on with life on his own ,A few months past and we talked about how he was doing his chemo was in full swing and he felt very ill, I made a point at the end of his treatment to meet up and to be honest I was shocked he looked and felt fantastic and everything looked good, he had one more appointment left as a final check up. later that week I got a call from him, to say he was suicidal would be an understatement his test had shown another lump, he just kept saying over and over again I can’t do chemo again mate I am just going to get a shotgun, I kept him on the phone for over an hour and repeated to wait and see what the lump is and not to make judgements on the unknown . Praise God his result came back that the lump was just a normal cyst. He told me that he would have to call and see my new house and have a chat about all I had been through, on arrival I showed him around our new home pointing out to him all the work that I had to do i.e. loft conversion etc and all the work I had already done, In the first room I showed him his reply was oh my you have had it hard God love you..Startled by his remark I was going to laugh at him coming off with this statement but I said nothing , so we moved downstairs and again showed him a few rooms another reply of wow you’ve really had it hard mate God love you he said. I knew I had to continue on talking to him as I was just waiting for that one more reply to confirm what I felt was happening, so I made him a coffee and chatted to him about what had happened to me and my family over the past year and the reply came my heart jumped “oh mate I didn’t realise you went through all that God love you and your wee family", I burst with laughter and smiled at him he didn’t know why I reacted the way I did and said are you on drugs mate I replied yes mate heavenly ones, you see a short time ago a very sick man denied God by saying that he didn’t do him and that same man like Peter has just proclaimed three times God love you. My friend is fully cured although still not doing God but he knows that I know God did him…Praise Jesus
