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Fishing for Answers (by Billy Coffey)


Image courtesy of photobucket.com

Next time I won’t order the fish. That’s what I thought after he left. If I would have ordered chicken or steak or shrimp I would have gotten my food earlier, which meant I would have prayed earlier, which meant he wouldn’t have seen me. But he did, and like they say, that is that.

Lunch time for me is a sort of take-it-when-you-can thing that depends on how busy I am and how far I want to drive. Most of the time that places me inside a small restaurant downtown, just a few blocks from my work. Nice place with nice food. Very friendly, very tasty, and very quick.

So. The fish.

An extra ten minutes, the waitress said. “You sure you don’t mind waiting?”

No.

The man came in five minutes later and was shown to the table across from mine. We smiled and nodded like friendly folk do, and I was fairly certain that would be the extent of our interaction. It wasn’t. Because soon afterward my fish arrived and I offered a very silent and inconspicuous prayer.

He was staring at me when I opened my eyes.

“So you’re a churchgoer?” he asked.

“Yep,” I answered. “You?”

“Never,” he said in a tone that seemed rather proud.

I nodded and went back to eating.

“Don’t believe in God myself,” he said. “Just seems like a waste. I guess that means I’m going to hell, huh?”

I’d been around long enough to know when I was being baited into a conversation I really didn’t want to get into. This, I thought, was one of those conversations.

So I just said “Not my call” and raised another bite of fish.

“Not your call,” he repeated. “That’s typical.”

I chewed and thought about the last little bit of what he said. It was more bait, of course. And it was still a conversation I didn’t want to have. But maybe it was now one I should.

“Typical?” I asked.

“Yeah, typical. You people like to use those pat little answers for questions you just don’t know or are just too afraid to face.”

“Like whether you’re going to hell?” I asked.

“Sure. That just bugs me. Christians say that God is love, but if you don’t go along with the program then you get eternally punished. That doesn’t sound like love to me, that just sounds hypocritical.”

I shrugged. “Not really. I reckon God’s spent—what, fifty years or so?—trying to get you to pay attention to Him. He’s arranged circumstances, given you a glimpse of things you don’t normally see or think about, even spoke to you. There’s no telling how many chances you’ve gotten to say ‘Hello’ to God after He’d said the same to you. But you have a choice. That’s how He made you. You can choose to listen or not, choose to believe or not, choose to accept or not. I take it that so far, it’s been not. So if you spend your whole life telling God to stay as far away from you as possible, He’s gentleman enough to do just that when it’s all over. So yes, I suppose if you keeled over right here right now, you’d go to hell. But it’s not me who’s gonna send you there, and it’s not God either. It’s you.”

He looked at me. I looked back.

“Alright then,” he said.

We both continued our meals. Ten minutes later he squared his tab with the waitress and left, pausing at the door to offer me a smile and a tip of his hat.

The waitress focused on me then, asking if I’d like more coffee or just the check. I asked for a check and an answer.

“That fella come in here a lot?”

“Sure,” she said. “He’s the preacher at the church next door.”

“He’s the what?” I asked her.

“The preacher.” Then she smiled and added, “Was he havin’ a little fun with you?”

“Don’t know if I’d call it fun.”

“He likes that,” she said. “Likes finding people who call themselves Christians and tests them. Sees if they know their faith or just accept it. These days we have to be ready to defend it, don’t we?”

“We do,” I said.

And that’s the truth. It isn’t enough to just accept our faith nowadays. We have to stand for it. And this is the truth, too—next time I go there to eat, I’m ordering the fish. Maybe he’ll stop by.

***

To read more from Billy Coffey, visit him at at his website and follow him on the twitter at @billycoffey.

Christian versus Christ Follower


UPDATE: Jeff quoted C. S. Lewis this morning in church. I thought it fit nicely with this post. Besides, you know I love me some C. S. Lewis:

“For the church is not a human society of people united by their natural affinities but the Body of Christ, in which all members, however different, (and He rejoices in their differences and by no means wishes to iron them out) must share the common life, complementing and helping one another precisely by their differences.”

Let me first say that I’m not slamming the term “Christian”. I’m okay with it. I am one. Secondly, while the Mac versus PC commercials are mildly entertaining, I have not yet nor do I plan to partake in the drinking of the Apple kool-aid. I’m sticking to my Gateway, thankyouverymuch.

Anyway, I thought these parodies were pretty cool, so I wanted to share them with you. I would also like to thank ThinkChristian.net, because they originally posted these almost a year ago. They have a pretty cool website, too. You should check it out.

And one that’s close my little church planting heart:

There are several of these on YouTube. Just something to think about. Not bashing, just makes me pause and think about how non-Christians see us sometimes.

Have a wonderful Sunday!

Pay it Forward (or is it pay it backwards) Repost

Yes, yes! This is a repost. But family time plus crappy internet equals me not feeling very inspired to write something new. Hope you don’t mind. Besides, not many folks were reading my blog when I first posted it anyway, so there you go:

For me, there has been a significant mind/heart shift since I’ve been writing this blog and commenting on other blogs. I find myself constantly re-evaluating how I act and react in day to day situations. It’s as if once I’ve typed something and sent it hurtling into cyberspace, it’s there for eternity to remind me when I fail to live up to the views I’ve expounded upon. I may not be able to remember where they all are, but they are no doubt out there somewhere. Such is the case with a comment I made on JML’s blog, Very Much Later. JML (Jake) writes a blog that I’m happy to say, I stumbled upon shortly after I started blogging myself. I love the honesty in his writing. He doesn’t sugar coat his perspective on being a Christian, and he’s able write about his personal walk without talking in “Christianese”. Also, he’s got some pretty amusing vomit stories.

This particular post was about witnessing to people. Specifically, what I refer to as the “cold call” witness. My comment pertained to how I’ve never actually been comfortable approaching total strangers and witnessing to them. Instead, I prefer to get to know a person and let them get to know me. If they seem drawn to this intangible thing that’s different about me, that’s when I’ll share my story with them. This is just what feels right to me — I’m not judging how others share the gospel of Christ. There is one way I’m comfortable witnessing to strangers. I try to find opportunities to practice random acts of kindness. (It’s an old bumper sticker, but I still like it.)

A couple of mornings ago, I had a piece of mail that I wanted mailed that day. Since our mail person doesn’t typically come until late afternoon, I dropped it in a public mailbox at the nearest shopping center. My son wanted to come with me and get some breakfast at Jack in the Box. As I was waiting in the drive-thru line, I thought, “I should pay for the person behind me.” This was appealing to me on many levels: 1) I would be practicing a random act of kindness, 2) I would be teaching my son a valuable lesson about our motives to do good, and 3) it was a fairly easy way to accomplish 1 and 2.

Except that is wasn’t easy. My first clue should have been the fact that I had to repeat my order 3 times. The cashier’s English was not great. When I pulled up to the window, she gave me my total. I said, “Okay. But I also want to pay for the person behind me.” She smiled and said, “Yes, yes okay.” Then proceeded to read my order back to me. At this point, there are several cars behind me, and the intended recipient of my random act of kindness was looking impatient. He also looked like he could be a body double for Paul Sr. on “American Chopper”. After two attempts to communicate what I was trying to do, she finally got her manager. I still had to repeat it twice. Not because her English was bad, but because apparently, paying for a total stranger’s meal is not a common occurrence at this particular eating establishment.

I was finally able to accomplish my original goal. But within that time span of approximately 3 or 4 minutes, several times I wanted to just blow it off and try again another time. But Jesus never said that following Him would be easy. And if everything was easy to attain, then nothing would be worth having. As I was pulling away, I made a conscience effort NOT to look at the truck behind me. But I couldn’t help it. I glanced at him just as he was turning his head towards me. I’m not a great lip reader, but I’m pretty sure his way of saying thank you translated into “What the F***!?!” And that was good enough for me…(smile)