casual acquaintances

There are all sorts of people whose paths we cross in the course of our daily routines.

People you meet on the bus as you go to, or return from, your work. People who work in the shop you frequent. People who use the sports club at the time you use it too.

All sorts of different people whose paths we regularly cross.

Not friends as such, since we barely know them at all, beyond the superficial chat we have in those moments of time which we share with them. They're more like 'casual acquaintances'.

There's a guy like that whom I see most days. It's a fleeting few seconds at most each day in the main that I see the man. But sometimes there's scope for more.

He knows who I am and where I work and what it is I do. We've had that sort of chat long since.

I think it slightly intrigues the guy that I choose to do what I do: and that I plainly so enjoy it all. He sometimes wants to know more.

What about him? Well, I've got to know a bit about him. He's a pleasant, genuine guy. Warm and friendly and keen to please. But a little bit lost in life.

No longer young (though he's hadly what you'd think of as being 'middle-aged'), he's still to discover what life's all about and where his life is going. I think he feels he's drifting.

Is this what life is all about? This sort of endless routine?

He's started to ask when our Sunday worship services take place. And what they're like. And who's all there. "Because I'm not that religious," he says, "and I can't really sing at all."

"You'll need to show me the way!" he jokes. Except, deep down, he's not joking. I know that and I think he's glad I know that too. He's looking - like so many are today - he's looking for the way.

"Half past ten in the morning?" he asks, when I tell him the time that our morning service starts. "I'm not sure I'll be awake by then," he laughs. "I need my sleep!"

Which is doubtless true. His hours are demanding and must often leave him weary.

I saw him on Monday morning again and joked again that I'd missed him at the service on Sunday morning. He'd slept in, he confessed.

"But I passed by later on when the service was on," he said.

"What a lot of people!" I think his surprise was genuine all right. He'd looked in through the windows from the lane which runs along beside the church and hadn't expected the place to be so full.

"Do you get performance-related pay?" he asked. This time I couldn't quite tell if the guy was simply joking or not.

"No," I smiled, "it doesn't quite work like that!"

This morning I told him I'd started to pray for him hard. That he'd find the work for which he'd been made.

"Ach," he said, "people have been praying that for fifteen years!"

"Well, there's a challenge!" I said in reply. "What would you like to be doing?"

A question. Questions often open doors. The Lord uses questions a lot. Check the Scriptures and see for yourself.

It opened doors this morning. He started to chat at some length. About the sort of training that he'd done. The work he'd hoped to do. And how he hadn't made it.

And here he is now, drifting into middle life, muddling by as best he can but sensing that there surely must be more to life than this.

"I couldn't do what you must do," he added after a while. "Visiting elderly ladies? No, I don' think I could cope with that!" he said.

"And children? How do you cope with the children?" he was in full flight by now. "There's another minister comes in here," he went on, "and he was saying the other day, 'Oh no! I've got the children today. I hate children!'"

He looked at me. "Do you not hate children, too?"

I'm thinking this is a bit of a wind-up!

"No," I say, "I love the children being around. I'm still just a child myself!"

The guy is probing. Trying to get a handle on the life I've got. Not just what I do in life. But more what makes me tick.

"You're good at listening, anyway," he says. And I can see that's been important for the man. Maybe not that many people take time to listen to him.

And maybe that's what he most needs. A listening ear.

And yes, I guess I do a lot of listening. There's an awful lot of listening in the ministry of preaching.

Listening to what people are saying - behind and beyond the words that they use, behind and beyond what their eyes and their faces are saying. And listening to all that the Spirit of God is himself, with such wisdom, revealing.

Yes, I do a lot of careful listening. The guy is right.

And one of the things that I'm hearing from God is this daily reminder that here in these simple encounters, here in such 'casual acquaintances' all of us have, here is where Jesus is quietly and gently at work.

Meeting with people the way he's been doing for years. And touching their lives and opening their hearts and leading them into the kingdom.

And the wonder is we get to share with him in that.