Sometimes, they say, you can look into a person’s eyes and see all the way to their soul.
Before this week’s Brussels deployment, Billy Graham Rapid Response Team chaplain Jeff Naber may not have always seen things this way.
But a week in Belgium has certainly shaped his thinking.
“It’s a certain connection, a look,” said Naber, part of a chaplain team responding with emotional and spiritual care after the March 22 Brussels terrorist attack. “Before any words are spoken.”
And it’s almost an immediate thing. People are either eager to talk. Or they avoid eye contact at all cost.
“The connection happens when someone looks at you,” Naber said. “You get this feeling that God has brought us together.”
And in a country where you can hear 15 different languages spoken in a given day, sometimes a look says far more than any words can say.
“It’s happened to me repeatedly, when I ask if they understand English, and they do,” Naber said. “A lot of people do. And we’ve been able to connect.”
This deployment—a joint effort between the Billy Graham Rapid Response Teams in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom—has already had many memorable moments. But the one seared in the mind of Naber happened during a simple trip to the market.
Looking for a couple lighters to help keep candles from continuously being snuffed out at memorial sites, Naber saw this man with a big white dog.
Reminding him of a husky he had a few years back, Naber struck up a conversation, not knowing the man’s language. Turns out, he’s a Spaniard, but spoke enough English to start a dialogue.
And like so many other interactions, Naber knew right away, the man wanted to talk.
“He really wanted the conversation,” he said. “There were hundreds of people who passed by as we talked.”
First, the man asked what Naber was doing in Brussels. “I told him about the ministry we were doing here and he thought it was great. But he told me he didn’t need God right now and really, there wasn’t a time he could remember needing God.”
Naber wasn’t about to push things. But the guy wasn’t parting ways, either.
“You can tell when people are done with the conversation,” he said, “but he really wanted to keep talking.”
The back-and-forth led to the topic of heaven, where the man was pretty sure he’d end up. After all, he was a nice guy. Surely, he’s making the cut.
Within five minutes, Naber had walked through “Steps to Peace,” leading the man to make an eternity-altering decision.
That “ministry of presence,” perhaps the most underestimated ministry in a time of tragedy turned into a ministry of conversation and finally a ministry of prayer. “I know it was the Holy Spirit.”
Prayer Request
Would you please pray for the people of Brussels as well as those ministering with the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team (RRT)? Several churches have partnered with the RRT chaplains, who are all feeling the Lord’s peace despite ministering in a place that’s less than two percent Christian.
“I keep asking everybody, ‘How you doing? How you sleeping?’ And everybody’s sleeping well,” Naber said. “To me, the sleep thing is where you can gauge how people are holding up.”
