I eat breakfast a lot at the Towne Crier. It's a great place to have a start-the-day meeting, and the Towne Crier's one egg special is one of the best meal deals in Abilene. However, given that cholesterol and me currently have issues... my breakfast dish of choice is a bowl of oatmeal. Trust me, I have eaten a river of oatmeal at the Towne Crier.Seeing as how I have been placed into the Towne Crier on such a frequent basis, and am consuming so much oatmeal there, it seemed clear God was providing me with a marvelous community front porch opportunity. In response to that opportunity, I have spent the last year or so learning the names of the Towne Crier's kind and efficient wait staff, calling the wait staff by name, trying to be a generous tipper, asking the wait staff how we might include them in our prayers... in other words, trying to be the person I believe Jesus would be if he ate lots of breakfasts/oatmeal at the Towne Crier.
My efforts at being Jesus at the Towne Crier have been encouraged by other men who are equally invested in being Jesus at the Towne Crier. Men like Mark V, Ed G, and Matt B (just to name a few) have seen the God-opportunity that we have been provided, and they have seized it alongside me.
Yesterday I felt God affirming that I had sufficiently invested myself in relationship with the Towne Crier's wait staff as to offer an invitation to them to worship with us at SoHills on Sunday. I am sensitive to people feeling that they are being treated as "projects," so I had waited until I felt a depth of relationship was in place to make extending such an invitation a natural thing.
Both of the Towne Crier's wait staff enthusiastically accepted my invitation to join us at SoHill... and I left them yesterday with my crudely drawn map (another great use for napkins), along with my email address and cell number.
Which gets me to this morning, and another breakfast meeting I had at ye olde Towne Crier. I'm standing at the cash register paying for my meal, when one of the wait staff that I'd invited to SoHills runs up to me, tame both of my hands, and says, "I really want to be at your church on Sunday... thank you for inviting me... but I have to take my son to see his stupid father, my ex, in Lubbock... thank you for inviting me... I really do need a church... thank you."
By the time she's spoken all of this out, tears were running down her cheeks. She wiped her face, smiled and said, "I gotta get back to work."
As I walked to my car, I marveled at the grace and goodness of our great God, who has... in His infinite wisdom... seen fit to entrust us with the privilege of showing and living and sharing Jesus. And I found that I was both smiling and crying as I slid into my car and drove off.
