Sometimes I don’t know what to say. Our friends who are living in desperation need to hear truth in a way that they can understand and experience. They don’t need to hear a four-point outline or some theological treatise on why God acts as he does. It doesn’t matter if they are non-literate or so well-educated that they think in outline form (yes, I know people who think like that). My friend is a Sai Baba devotee, and she was living in desperation. She has a bachelor’s degree, reads Sai Baba’s writings, and speaks five languages. She’s very intelligent. However, on this day she had just returned from the hospital where she had almost died. Her desperation showed in her cry, “I must have done something wrong for my god to forsake me like this.” She didn’t need to hear my cliches of “God loves you,” and she wasn’t emotionally ready for me to get out my Bible and read Psalm 91 to her. My heart grappled for the words to say, and I cried out to the Spirit, “Help me out, please!” Then, the words came. “It sounds like you need peace right now. I know a woman who once needed peace like this. Can I tell you about her?” ”YES! Please!” The door was open and I watched her face as I began telling her about the woman who washed Jesus’ feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. Jesus didn’t care about her bad reputation; he forgave her sins and told her to go in peace. By the end of the story, tears were streaming down my friend’s face. ”God has sent you to me,” she said, “to bring me peace today.” For a moment in time, my friend had become that woman, and she had experienced that same peace. As a very traditional woman, she would have balked at any other way I would have tried to tell her about Jesus. In fact, this was the first time she had even heard a full story about him. If the life-transforming peace that Jesus brings can be experienced by anyone through a story, the problem of what to say is solved. Tell a story, when you don’t know what to say and even when you think you do. Can it really be that simple?