A true story told by writer Auburn Sandstrom at The Moth, the acclaimed organization dedicated to the art and craft of storytelling:

In 1992, Auburn was 29, the mother of a three-year-old son, trapped in an abusive marriage – and an addict. One night she hit rock bottom. She was curled up on a filthy carpet in a cluttered apartment, in horrible withdrawal from a drug she had been addicted to for several years. In her hand was a little piece of paper. For hours, she kept folding and crumbling it. It was the phone number for a Christian counsellor her mother had given her in one of their rare moments of contact. Finally, the desperate young mother punched the numbers on her phone. It rang. A man answered.

“Hi, I got this number from my mother. Uh, do you think you could talk to me?”

Auburn heard some shuffling at the other end of the line. A little radio in the background was snapped off and the man who answered became very present. “Yes, yes, yes. What’s going on?”

For the first time, Auburn poured out her story. She told him that she wasn’t feeling good, that things had gotten pretty bad in her marriage, that she had a drug problem, that she was scared.

The man at the other end of the line didn’t judge. He just sat with her and listened. Auburn was encouraged by his kindness and gentleness.

It was two in the morning. The man stayed up the whole night with Auburn, just talking, listening and being there until the sun rose. By daybreak, she had calmed down. The raw panic had passed. She was feeling okay.

She was grateful to him. “Hey, you know, I really appreciate you and what you’ve done for me tonight. Aren’t you supposed to be telling me to read some Bible verses or something? Because that’d be cool, I’ll do it, you know. It’s all right.”

He laughed and said,
“Well, I’m glad this was helpful to you.”

“No, really. You’re very good at this. I mean, you’ve seriously done a big thing for me. How long have you been a Christian counsellor?”

There was a long pause at the other end of the line. “Auburn, please don’t hang up. I’ve been trying not to bring this up.”

“What?”

“You won’t hang up?”

“No, I won’t.”

“I’m so afraid to tell you this. But the number you called . . . ”   He paused again.
“You got the wrong number.”

Auburn didn’t hang up. They talked a little longer.

Auburn never got his name or called him back.

Auburn Sandstrom survived that night. She’s now a successful writer and teacher; she raised her little boy, alone, to become a magnificent young athlete and scholar who graduated from Princeton.

She concludes her story of that night:

” . . . the next day I felt this kind of joy, like I was shining. I think I’ve heard them call it ‘the peace that passes understanding.’ I had gotten to see that there was this completely random love in the universe. That it could be unconditional. And that some of it was for me . . . In the deepest, blackest night of despair, if you can get just one pinhole of light . . . all of grace rushes in.”

A stranger called in the middle of the night by mistake becomes the means of transformation and grace for a desperate young mother. Such compassion, such selfless caring, is the Spirit of God in our midst.

This solemnity of Pentecost celebrates the love that IS God and OF God: the love that binds the Father to the Son and now binds us to God and to one another. It is the love that transcends words to embrace the heart and soul of each one of us; it is the love that gives voice to the things we believe but are unable to speak; it is the love that enables us to be for others “pinholes of light” through which the grace of God rushes in.