Let me tell you about my friend Ruby. When I was a young Christian, full of zeal, I found myself involved in a ministry to men in a minimum security prison in Davidson County North Carolina.

Jesus encourages His followers to do such things in Mathew 25:35-36, so I wanted to do those things. It took a little courage to visit prisoners. In North Carolina all prisoners are reintroduced to society by moving from maximum to minimum security prisons before they are released into halfway houses and set free. This means you have murderers and people serving time for drugs and alcohol offenses sharing living quarters together. When you went in to talk to the prisoners you never knew who you would get or what they were in for; and you couldn’t ask. It was a rule.

Anyway, Ruby was a 75 year old saint who lived in public housing on the south side of my home town. I met her when she was recruited by a friend of mine to visit the prison. She was from West Virginia, she was a down home country girl who grew up in the coal fields and worked in textile mills all her life.

We hit it off right away. Both my parents had grown up on farms and I was familiar with “country.” Those were my people. Like a lot of women in the south, Ruby loved to cook and she loved to feed me. We’d have home cooked vegetables and some type of meat and open-pot boiled coffee. Cowboy coffee, made by scooping grounds into a percolator with the basket removed and just boiled till you could stand a spoon up in it.

Sometimes I’d take her to the grocery store to shop. Her needs were simple. She left religious tracts everywhere she went: she bought them by the hundreds. There were different subjects; I remember one in particular that was an anti-television tract called “Devilvision.” My Uncle Carlton would summarize that tract in one sentence by saying, “that thing will suck your brains out through your eyeballs.” Only Ruby would have argued it was your soul getting sucked out, not just your brains.

Ruby was a Pentecostal believer. They believe the gifts of the Holy Spirit are still operating today. Those gifts include preaching, teaching, evangelism (proclaiming the Gospel around the world), healing, prophecy, speaking in tongues and the interpretation of tongues.

I guess spiritual healing and tongues are the two gifts that give other Christian denominations the most trouble. Ruby spoke of some hostility toward her church up in West Virginia when she was growing up; but she wasn’t shy about speaking out in tongues or otherwise. She genuinely cared for people and believed they needed God’s saving grace. She was patient and kind. She took no offense even if sometimes she got a prisoner that only talked to her to make fun of her. That rarely went the way they thought it would: eventually they began to respect her. She really did care for those men.

So, as a Pentecostal believer she wanted to 1. Get you saved, and 2. Introduce you to the Holy Spirit and the gifts, specifically tongues. She was sure that with the Holy Spirit a believer could and would do miracles. Ruby was no bully. When she wanted you to be blessed she didn’t try to talk you into saying a prayer and repenting till the fire fell. She prayed. And when she didn’t get an answer, she’d ask others to pray.

One evening after we got back to her house from the prison and we had had some of her coffee, she looked at me with a possum’s grin, held a finger towards me and said,” I’m praying for you. I’m praying for something special for you.”

I said, “thank you” and “What is it?” She refused to tell me at first. I knew her church was having a week long set of meetings with a visiting evangelist. Every night, except prison night, Ruby would go to the meetings, hear the gospel preached, socialize with friends, and participate in a healing/ prayer service afterword.

There is a tradition, not just in her denomination but many others, of what is called “standing in” for someone. If someone was not able to be there physically, a friend or relative would “stand in” for them. The preacher would usually “lay hands” on the person standing in and pray for the absent person. They might have “a word of knowledge” and prophesy over them, or pray for healing or salvation for them.

This is one of the more mysterious parts of the faith. A “word of knowledge” can take many forms. It can be direction for a career move or a direction from the Lord about whether or not a couple was going to be able to get pregnant. It could also be a word to the congregation about a person’s character or standing in God’s kingdom.

Ruby was so excited about what she was praying for me I knew she couldn’t hold it in, but she tried. Knowing who she was and what she believed , I could guess that the wanted me to be “baptized in the Holy Spirit, evidenced by me speaking in tongues. So I asked her. “Is it the baptism of the Holy Spirit you want for me?” She got a surprised look on her face and said “yes, it is”.

I said, “Well Ruby, I already have that.” Then she said something that kinda shocked me. She got a startled look on her face and said, “That’s what that preacher said! I was standing in for you , asking that the Lord give you the baptism of the Holy Ghost. That preacher laid his hands on me and began to pray, and then he stopped and said, “Why Ruby, the Lord says he already has it.” But I didn’t believe him. I never heard you speak in tongues.”

I laughed and said, “I am little bit shy about that, but I do it, especially when I don’t know how to pray for something, I just let the Holy Spirit do it for me.” We both sat reflecting on that for a while.

I hid that one away in my spiritual treasure box; imagine someone you never met knowing something very intimate about you. He had to have heard that from our mutual friend, the Holy Spirit.

Now you might be skeptical. you might think he was guessing and got lucky. After all, you either have that gift or you don’t. I’ll just tease you a little bit by saying that was not the last time a total stranger knew something about me that no one else but God knew.

And now one last story about Ruby I think you’ll find interesting. Like I said earlier, Ruby loved to cook for me and share a meal and fellowship when we got back from prison. That means about the only part of her house I ever saw was her eat-in kitchen. However, one evening she wanted to show me something in her living room. She had a lot of knick knacks around the room that she laughingly called “dust catchers.” As we sat on her couch talking, I glanced around the room. I was shocked to see a picture of my cousin Angela in a frame on a shelf across from me.

I was confused. What was the connection? I said, “Ruby, that’s my cousin Angela’s picture.” She said, “What?” “Yep, that’s my cousin; no doubt about it!” I said, as I picked up the photo to inspect it.

Ruby said, “Well that’s my Granddaughter.”

“Raymond and Loretta’s daughter?”

“Yes”

“Raymond is my uncle,” I said. Ruby was my cousin’s maternal grandmother. We were practically family.

How wild that we were introduced to each other by God through the prison ministry. Looking back over my journals from that time period, I realized I had asked God to connect me with another family member who was believer for mutual support. He answered that prayer through Ruby. Our relationship was brief but meaningful as we shared family and ministry together. She was 75 and I was 27 when we met. We partnered for four years.

In April of 1990 I got married to my beautiful wife of 30 years. The picture of Ruby at the top of this blog is from our wedding. It may be the only one I have. We stopped going down to the prison together after my marriage. I was promoted at work and got involved with other ministries at that time. I saw Ruby from time to time but less frequently.

She is with the Lord now, and I think of her often. I always remember her fondly. I want to laugh out loud when I remember those times she was truly surprised by something. That incredulous look on her face and then the big smile afterwards are priceless images in my memory. God bless Ruby Sisk.