It was December 2002. My father was eighty-one years old, and he was battling colon cancer and underwent a colostomy. The nurses who came to change the bag wore masks and plastic gloves. During my previous visit, the bag needed to be emptied, and rather than wait for a nurse to visit, I did it. Although it wasn’t necessarily my place to do such a thing, it was just a way that I could help my father live in a slightly more dignified way and demonstrate to him and my family that love doesn’t hesitate to get its hands dirty.
There had been a remarkable softening in my father for a man who had been angry with me for many years, ever since I became a Christian and resigned from the police force. A few weeks before my final trip to see my father, my senior pastor at Times Square Church, David Wilkerson, said to me, “God is going to give you a window with your father.”
When I arrived at the hospital, my father was seated in a chair next to the door of his room. “Hi Dad,” I said. “Are you ready to pray with me?”
“I would like to do that,” he said. He knew what he was agreeing to. We had covered that territory on my prior visits. We prayed in great detail. I didn’t want him to go through the motions to appease me, and I didn’t want him to be the least bit confused. To know my father was to know a man who wouldn’t have prayed that prayer if he didn’t mean it. His word had always been his bond.
Once he was settled in bed, I touched my father’s arm gently. “I love you, Dad.”
“Carter, I love you.”
“It will be so awesome when I get to heaven to see you there, Dad.”
“I’ll be there.”
God brought my dad to himself, and a twenty-four-year journey came to a marvelous end. The scriptures say, “The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9, NKJV). Patiently waiting for God’s answer is not always something we like to do. Yet what we need to understand is that when God delays in answering prayer, we can be sure he is working in the hearts of all the people affected by the situation.
Carter Conlon joined the pastoral staff of Times Square Church in 1994 and was appointed Senior Pastor in 2001. In May of 2020 he transitioned into a continuing role as General Overseer of Times Square Church, Inc.