I was Sue Hansens’ pastor for several years in Florida. In my mind’s eye I picture her coming into the church stooped over, sometimes leaning on a walker, and with a portable oxygen tank hanging from her side. I would ask how she was doing and she would often answer, “One foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel!” She lived in a little house that she and her husband had built when they were more vigorous on a little patch of high ground between the gator infested Swift Creek and some swampy low lands.

During the darkest year of ministry I have yet experienced, Miss Sue (for that is how all ladies of a certain age are referred to in the south) called me and demanded an audience at her home. Things were bad at the church, and I was getting a few calls like that at the time. Mostly there was a frosty silence, which is worse even than the phone calls. I had no idea what Miss Sue wanted to say to me, but it didn’t sound good.

When I got to her house she waved me in and said “sit down.” It was not a request. I sat down, and she said “I have some things to tell you and you’re going to sit there and listen to everything I have to say.”

“Oh, no, here we go,” I thought to myself.

Then she launched into it. For several minutes she did nothing but tell me what she liked and appreciated about me as her pastor, and she was right I did not want to hear it. Sometimes it’s hard to receive praise, especially when you know the other person is just trying to cheer you up and on top of it all you feel unworthy because you’ve mishandled some things, but nevertheless she persisted. She summed it all up by saying “I am glad that God brought you here to our little church, and I love you.”

I cried on the drive back to my office. I did not deserve Miss Sue.

That was not a one-off occasion either. She began a ministry of encouragement to me and my family that continued right up until she died. In fact, Miss Sue called me early on the morning of that Sunday when I was first installed as pastor at State Road to let me know she was praying for me, and to remind me that if it didn’t work out I could “always come back to Lulu.” Shortly afterwards there came in the mail a package with hats and scarves that she had knit in hot, sultry Florida for us Tates way up in Northern Maine. No matter what was going on I knew that Miss Sue was for me. In that she was like a living reminder of Jesus.

So when she died I felt loneliness first, because I had lost one of my most valued traveling companions. She was a support that I had leaned into during a wobbly time… not unlike a walker. Miss Sue has already checked into that narrow inn whose windows open to the sunrise and where the sojourner sleeps until break of day, but during the years we walked together in Florida she taught me much about being an encourager.

I hope you can come join us as we talk about the Biblical command to encourage one another.