THE CALLER The vicarage bell chimed late one Saturday afternoon. I was inside, pouring over the morning’s sermon at my desk. Reluctantly I answered the door and found myself staring into the face of an anguished young man who stood clutching a cigarette in one hand on the porch. I listened to him for some time. His voice was shrill and tinged with desperation and his speech well rehearsed. I suggested the usual agencies - "Been there man, they won’t help" - until I had exhausted every option open to me. He kept shaking his head decisively. I reiterated my offer of  food and clothing but eventually I heard myself saying, firmly, "I’m sorry, I can’t help you." The young man’s face fell as I spoke those words. He nodded and began to walk slowly to where his two companions stood waiting at the gate, then turned and asked once more, "Sure you can’t help," his eyes pleading. I shook my head slowly, sadly, knowing there was nothing I could do. I watched them walk slowly out through the gates and down the road, towards Frankston. For much of that day, and the next one, I found myself distracted, rehearsing in my mind the nature of their particular request and my responses to it. I knew that there was a good chance, more than a chance, that the money they needed so desperately was for something other than the very convincing and emotive story they presented with. Experience makes one very skeptical. Yet I couldn’t help wondering... I wondered who the young man was; I wondered how he had got the scars on his face and why he had tattooed a tear drop underneath one of his eyes. I wondered who the young girl with him was, who remained with the other friend in the distance but still close enough to see that she could not be more than sixteen or seventeen years old. I wondered whose daughter she was. I wondered where they had come from and where they would go. Of course there are many times when we can’t help. Sometimes the situation is just too big, out of our control, beyond our capacity or strength to deal with. Sometimes what is being asked of us we simply don’t have to give or aren’t able to give. But I also know this. When I was forced to say those words, "I’m sorry I can’t help you," it hurt. When I looked into the eyes of that young man and told him I could not help him, I felt his pain. And when he and his friends were gone the whole incident troubled me and kept troubling me, forcing everything else that was happening around me into the background, until I called out to God in prayer on their behalf. We may not be able to help everyone who comes across our path - God knows we can’t. Even Jesus could not, or did not, help everyone who came across his path. But we can do this. We can feel the pain of another and be troubled by it, and wish that life was somehow different for them and for the countless others like them. The moment we don’t feel that, we lose something - not only of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ, but something of what it means to be human. For this reason I know the day I no longer feel the pain of another must be my last in Christian ministry. I pray that day never comes.