mil1lion

Someone I know very well was in touch with me this morning.

Excited. To say the least.

This person had just had a telephone call. Someone on the other end whose name rang no bells at all.

It was a call from a restaurant. This person I know very well had, the day before, been the restaurant's one millionth customer.

And, to celebrate, the restaurant was gifting two return air tickets to New York. Which suited this person I know very well very well. He'd been hoping to go there before the year was out.

He was totally bowled over. One in a million indeed!

Of course, if you'd been the 999,999th customer, you'd have felt pretty gutted. Like, if you'd not been quite so impatient and had let the guy behind you get in first ....

But, then, I guess if you were the 999,999th customer you'd never know. They don't ring you up for that and tell you, Sorry, you were one off the jackpot!

I wonder how many times that's been me. 999,999th, and I didn't know just how close I had been to being the one in a million guy.

No wonder this person I know very well was over the moon. And soon to be over the Atlantic.

To be that one in a million is a great and wonderful feeling.

Special. Made a fuss of.

I was thinking back over today and what it's involved. And it crossed my mind that all of the things that I'm doing each day are really along those lines.

Giving that sense of being one in a million to all of the people I meet.

Everything I do, I do it all for you.

When people come in for their coffees and teas and their lunches, that's how we try and make them feel.

That they'e one in a million. Getting the special treatment. That we're focussed on them and on meeting their needs. That they matter. That they're not just a face in the crowd.

We were a bit short-staffed with the volume of people today. So I was there and helping them out when I could. Giving folk time. Serving them food. Meeting their needs.

We like to try and ensure that this is a place to which they can come where they'll always be made to feel that they're really that one in a million.

Which is just how the Lord treats each of us, of course.

Jesus and Zacchaeus for instance.

Now, OK, there weren't a million people living in Jericho. I presume. But there were certainly crowds.

And out of the crowds it's this number-crunching accountant (who knows all that there is to know about statistics, and who's long since learned that because of his size and his job and a whole load else he's not even a face in the crowd - he's too small to even figure) - it's this little man who gets to know the one in a million feeling.

Your house, says Jesus. I must come to your house today for tea.

Jesus does the one in a million feeling better than anyone else.

And, like I say, that's what today has been like.

'Little' things mainly. But little things that make the big and little people, all alike, feel somehow they matter. That they're one in a million. Special.

Those for whom the Lord himself has time. Those for whom the Lord himself would go to any lengths. Nothing too much and nothing too hard.

I think that's what Francis (the nature-loving, 'animal' guy) was on about when he said to preach the gospel at all times: and if need be use words.

Give folk the one in a million feeling.

Surprise them, astound them, enrich them with the unexpected phone calls and the things you're glad to give them and to do for them they hadn't even dreamed of.

mil1lion

(Have you never played Dingbats? That's Dingbats for one in a million)