Eddy is my new friend at work. Well, he is not so new in the picture and he’s not even an employee. Eddy is a customer and he just celebrated his 72nd birthday a few weeks ago. He’s very quiet and likes to come and sit on a couch or a chair in the furniture section of the store. He sits there and watches people, look at different things like walkman’s, lamps or things like that, not so interested into buying anything. But when he does, he most of the time doesn’t even use what he bought. He gives it away. Eddy has no friends or family around. I think he’s never been married.

We met for the first time when I was putting an extension cord away, but couldn’t find where it belonged. Eddy was sitting on a chair and told me where extension cords were. We started chatting.

Ever since that day, everytime he comes by and I’m there, we chat for a few minutes. The interesting thing is that he has a keen memory. Eddy always picks up the conversation on Thursday the way we left it on Tuesday. He remembers my age and calculated that if he’d be 25 years younger and I, 25 years older, we’d be pretty much the same age. We’ve had some little good conversations. He keeps telling me that retired men like him don’t have much to do, so he spends time at the store. I don’t know why but it seems that regularly, he talks about heaven, or at lest, death and going somewhere. At one point he told me that he had a big (bad) file and so, when he gets before God, he didn’t know, but it probably wouldn’t go very well. He seemed to be okay with it, “what can I do about it anyways?” was the feeling that I got from him. He said he believed in God but didn’t go to church. I told him that people were not acceptable before God on the basis of the good they had done on earth. Going to church, praying and being a good person… these things are things we can “boast” about, but God’s standards are way too high and there is no way for us, mere sinners to meet God’s perfect requirements. That’s pretty much all I was able to tell him. I hope I can talk to him about God’s solution He gave us; Jesus Christ.

You can pray for Eddy, that God would open his heart, make him more sensitive to his spiritual state and the words he heard from me, that works and good deeds can never satisfy God’s requirements.