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Ryan followed a voice that was mixed with prayer and crying. He flew down to the third floor of a hospital, where a teenager sat halfway up in his hospital bed. Alone in the room, he slowly wiped his tears away with the bed sheet. Across his chest lay an open Bible.
Ryan counted eighteen praying guardians on their knees about the room, so Ryan knew this boy was seventeen years old. The name ‘Nicholas’ was written on the whiteboard on the wall.
Ryan saw that a bag of orange liquid hung on a pole beside the bed. A tube ran from it and connected to the boy’s chest. He noticed that Nicholas had no hair. There were dark circles under his eyes, and his cheekbones stuck out. His skin looked pale and gray, and his breathing was shallow. Ryan knew that Nicholas was really sick. He remembered that his great-uncle Chester had had cancer and lost his hair after receiving chemotherapy. He wondered if Nicholas had cancer too.
Ryan admired the roomful of balloons and cookie bouquets. There were green plants, and flowers packed on every shelf, plus get-well cards and posters with handwritten notes of love that covered the walls. On the nightstand beside the bed there was a small stack of colored brochures. Ryan read the bold print, “Students, do you know Christ? Attend ‘Youth Truth’ and meet Him.” Below those words was a picture of a football stadium filled with teenagers. Ryan wanted to read more of the brochure, but Nicholas began praying again, so he quickly crawled onto the bed beside the boy, snuggled up close, and listened.
“Father, my baseball team, Destiny, has stopped coming to see me here. Dying is a scary thing for us humans, and they know that I am not going to live. I’ve told them my cancer has spread and that it won’t be much longer.
“I know it’s really hard for them to face me, to face one of their friends dying, and I can understand that. But they don’t believe me when I tell them I’m not afraid to die. That’s OK, Father, but what’s not OK is that they don’t believe in You.
“It breaks my heart, Lord God, that they don’t know You. Soon I’ll be healed in heaven with You, but they’ll still be lost in this world. Who are You going to send to tell them about Jesus? They’ve got to meet Jesus! They gotta meet me up there someday, God. I just know heaven has a baseball diamond, and we have games yet to play. You know I’m ready to go with You, but what about my friends? Who’s going to tell them about the way to heaven?”
At that moment, the hall outside Nicholas’s room was filled with rowdy voices and squeaking tennis shoes on the floor. Several heavy knocks on the door pushed it wide open. Heads wearing baseball caps popped in, and many excited, uncontrolled voices filled the air.
The guardians shot quickly to the ceiling to make way for the dozen or more teenage boys who filled the room. Ryan saw several with raised hands getting ready to high five Nicholas. He knew that Nicholas could barely lift his hand to wipe tears, much less have the power to give and receive a healthy high five from these strong boys.
“Give ’em five,” Ryan shouted, and then he assisted Nicholas’s weak arm to meet the friendly blows that followed.
“Hey, man, what’s up?” one asked.
“What’s happenin’, Nick?” another asked. Staring at the orange bag of liquid on the pole, he knew what was up, but he really didn’t want to know what was happenin’.
Nicholas couldn’t believe the strength brought on by just a visit from his buddies. He couldn’t believe the power in his high five.
“You guys should come every day. You build me up.” Nicholas smiled.
The feisty young men pushed and crowded into the room and made themselves at home. Three piled into the recliner, two in the straight-back chair. The rest stacked onto Nicholas’s bed, barely missing Ryan, who quickly hovered up and over to the top of the bed for a full view of the room. His smiled and began to listen.
For the next hour and forty-five minutes, the guys in baseball caps reported, play by play, inning by inning, the details of how they had qualified that afternoon for baseball nationals in Tampa, Florida. Nicholas absorbed every last detail of their stories. He commented on every victory and laughed until he was exhausted. The team captain could see that Nicholas was really tired. Signaling the team that it was time to go, he tapped his watch and nodded toward the door, and then he told Nicholas that they needed to leave.
Through all the years that the Destiny team had played together, Nicholas had always insisted they pray before each game. He was known as Destiny’s “pray boy.” Tonight, again, he would live up to his name.
“Huddle up, men. Pray Boy’s going to say it,” said the captain.
The guys stood gathered around his bed and stacked their hands together. Ryan slid down the bed sheet beside Nicholas and added his hand to the heap. Then Nicholas prayed.
“Father, I thank You for every game we’ve played together. Thank You that we haven’t lost a game in three and a half years. Thank You for healing our minor injuries, and thank You for all the safe travels.
“Tonight, God, this pray boy has just two last things to ask of You. First, for our team: please watch over these guys at the nationals, bless them individually and give them endurance for all the games, let them win, give them safe travel, bless the healthy food they eat, please let Florida be ready for them!”
Yells and hoots exploded in the room!
“And secondly, Father, please send Your Holy Spirit to lead them to know Christ as their personal Savior. We’re a team here on earth, Lord, and someday we want to be a team in heaven.”
There was a brief silence, and then Nicholas said, “In the name of Christ we pray. Amen.”
No one wanted to be the first to pull his hand out of the stack; everyone knew this was the last time Nicholas would pray for them. Most of these guys were not believers in Christ, but they were believers in Nicholas’s lucky prayers.
Always after Nicholas’s prayer, the guys on the Destiny team would shout out “another win” then run onto the field. But tonight nobody shouted it; in fact, nobody moved a muscle. The hands remained in the center pile until one was forced to slide out to wipe away a humbled tear that had managed to escape.
Ryan was moved by their sadness, but remembering the brochures about “Youth Truth” that lay on the nightstand, he told Nicholas to hand them out to the guys.
“Oh, by the way, guys, before you leave, I have one last request to ask of you.”
“Anything you ask, man.” The captain’s answer was followed by fourteen positive grunts.
“Over here on the table are some brochures my youth pastor brought me yesterday.” Ryan helped Nicholas point to the brochures, and one of the guys handed the stack to him.
“There’s going to be a one-evening youth retreat tomorrow night at the university,” Nicholas continued, “and my last request of each one of you is that you will go.”
Each team member took a brochure and promised Nicholas he would go.
“I’ll go but just for you, Nicholas,” one guy said.
Nicholas smiled and replied, “That’s a good enough reason.”
The team laughed, replaced their caps, and left the room a bit more quietly than they had entered. A few uttered the word “later,” but not one could bear to say “good-bye.”
“You’re going to love heaven, Nicholas,” Ryan said. “And you’re right; there is a baseball diamond.” He pulled the covers up high on Nicholas, gave him a hug, and flew out of the room the same way he entered.