tim@resuscitationblog.com

It’s Saturday morning and I have banished myself to the laundry room which has doubled as my office since the outbreak of the Coronavirus in early 2020. My son and his wife are meeting with their doula in preparation for the birth of their first child in 2 months, so I am making myself scarce for this little while. It has been an uneventful morning and I am taking advantage of it by catching up on reading the local paper, news articles and a couple of the blogs that I’ve been neglecting lately. I am on my third cup of coffee (I love good coffee!) and a few of the things I am reading relate to coffee shops and conversations that occur in them.

Coffee shops are great spots to meet our people and have essential conversations. On any given day you are likely to hear a variety of chatter about loves, hates, problems, first time introductions, work and all kinds of God talk. It’s nearly impossible not to overhear what is being said at nearby tables. Coffee shops are intimate spaces…and by intimate, I mean crowded, most of the time. So, we invariably catch ourselves inadvertently listening to other conversations beside our own.

I heard a pastor speak a few years back about overhearing a nearby chat two people were having in her favorite coffee shop. They were saying many derogatory things regarding an unnamed person. The more she listened, the more this pastor realized they were talking about her. She was incensed! This was her favorite hangout and now they had ruined it for her. Oh yeah, and their hurtful words continued to sting her somewhere deep inside her soul. Sometimes overhearing what others are saying can be detrimental to one’s wellbeing.

One of the columns I read in our local are the letters written to the editor. I usually am looking for familiar names, like reading the obituaries. However, it’s also intriguing to read what people are getting ratcheted up about. This morning I read one such letter about something else overheard in a local coffee shop. The author was unknown to me, but the topic of the conversation was not. He had overheard a pastor tell a repentant gray-haired man that God would forgive him for getting vaccinated so long as the man ‘resisted “manipulative” government mask mandates’.  The author is an unbeliever, yet still bemoaned the reduction of the Gospel to this kind of drivel. (My word, not his).

I can’t help but wonder if there aren’t a lot of folks out there forming wrong opinions about God or His church because they have overheard foolish conversations like the one written about above. Perhaps they have overheard folks talk about their church and in that same conversation speak hatefully about another individual, race, gender, or lifestyle. The official Word tells us, “God is love”. The talk on the street seems to be telling a different story…at least about God’s people.  And it seems the non-church attending people are forming their theology based upon this hearsay.

The Apostle Paul wrote very wise words hundreds of years ago about the conversations we have with each other. He knew nothing about coffee shops; however, he was well versed in how we ought to be talking with each other. He wrote in his letter to the Colossian believers these words, “Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.” This is great advice, right? Not always easy, but great! We ought to be speaking true words instead of the before stated drivel. Our words ought to have a loving and caring ring to them, as well.



A year or so before the pandemic, I was in a restaurant in Spokane, eating a snack before I headed back to Wenatchee. My server was extremely friendly and chatty. The conversation came around to the reason I was in Spokane and that led to telling her I am a pastor. The mood changed. Her response was less than enthusiastic. She informed me she was a lesbian and had overheard hateful things said by the staff of a nearby church who frequented this eatery regularly. “I thought pastors were supposed to be nice. Those guys aren’t”, she confided to me. I proceeded to tell her about our God Who is love and stated they didn’t seem to represent him very well. We had a very enjoyable chat. When I finished my snack, I asked for the check. To my surprise another table had paid my bill. They had overheard our conversation and felt compelled to show appreciation for my words. That’s what I would love to happen every time somebody overheard what we are saying about our beliefs. Not necessarily paying the bill but being moved positively by our words.

 “Let your conversation be gracious and attractive so that you will have the right response for everyone.” Colossians 4:6 (NLT)

Dear God,

Please help me to fashion my conversations in such a way that those who overhear them might believe the truth about you. Help me use gracious and attractive words so those who might overhear them will learn about your great love for the world. In the name of Jesus, the son,

Amen