Humpty
A typical Eastender, Mike was a salt-of-the-earth type. Called a spade, a spade. He was an out and out Christian and didn’t mind who he told about Jesus. He just shared the things of God unaffectedly with anyone and everyone he came into contact with – it was in his nature.
Mike was in the food trade. Each day he delivered fresh eggs from the country into the heart of the city, supplying restaurants and cafes. He drove round in a battered old van with a large sticker on the side – one of those uncompromising ones – not a warm and fuzzy “Jesus loves you” but a “Jesus died to save sinners like you and me” type. The sort that got him noticed. And laughed at. But Mike didn’t care.
One day, whilst on a delivery in the east end, a customer asked Mike if he had a minute. So Mike and this man sat in the back of the decrepit egg van on a couple of elderly crates and chatted for a while. They did this every week for a good few weeks. Same time, same place. In the course of those conversations Mike shared his simple faith with this guy. They prayed together and the man accepted Christ into his life. But the next week the man was nowhere to be seen and Mike did not see him again for 7 years.
During that period, Mike went about as far away from God as it was possible to go. He became disillusioned and disinterested in the Bible and stopped praying. Church became something his wife did alone. Mike wanted none of it and where a sticker once stood proud, a dirt-edged outline now adorned his van.
One Sunday, having had enough of the wife-nagging, he finally went to church again. He was alarmed to see that the speaker was the very man he had last seen in the back of his egg van all those years before. Mike kept his head down. He was ashamed and did not want to be recognised. But it was too late. The guy had already seen him and remembered him well.
At the end of the service, before Mike could run, the man approached him.
“I have something to tell you,” he began, “but I’m not sure where to start “¦ it sounds a bit stupid.”
“That’s fine,” said Mike. “I don’t want to hear it anyway.”
“No you need to,” said the speaker “It’s a kind of message from God.”
Then, looking really embarrassed, the man started to recite the children’s nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty.
He got to the last line, his cheeks flaming red:
“All the King’s horses and all the King’s men,
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
Then he added simply, “But Jesus can.”
Mike was astounded. Something in him just stopped still. He knew he had to respond to this. It was so personal, so child-like, so right for him. The egg-man was put back together. This is a true story. Mike got up in my parent’s church one Sunday some years ago and shared how God had brought him back from a life without Jesus, by using a nursery rhyme and someone he himself had led to the Lord.
God uses unexpected events and circumstances to get our attention. He loves to surprise us and bring us closer to Him. Does God have a simple, child-like message He wants you to hear today, or perhaps He’s asking you to pass on something that makes absolutely no sense to you whatsoever? Be bold!