After my evening meal, a little later than normal tonight, I stood to leave. One of the young servers at The Woodman stopped to ask if everyhting had been to my satisfaction this evening. When I replied that it had been, I also thanked her for the way that she and her co-workers always take such good care of me as their patron.
She made a couple of complimentary remarks, and then indicated that it was always their pleasure to see me come in. “Everyone talks about you,” she said. “We all call you ‘The American Man.’” Wow!
Silly as it may sound to some people, that brought me to tears as I walked back to my car in the car park. It hit me … “To these wonderful new friends of mine, what they think of America is tempered by what they experience in their relationship with me!” That’s a sobering bit of responsibility … to be what I ought to be, because I’m a reflection on my homeland as a sojourner in another country.
But greater still is the responsibility of representing my Heavenly Home to the people around me, wherever in this world where I roam … and what they see in me also tempers how they view Christianity … and even God perhaps. We do not have to “put on airs,” as they used to say down south; but in the course of just being ourselves … the BEST ourselves we can be … it should arouse the curiosity of those around us enough to prompt questions about us … about our lives … about our lifestyles.
And then, we are to be ready … ready to graciously give an answer to those who ask us why we have such “hope.” Do you get it? Something about our daily lives is to be so powerful … from hearts of humility, not of pride … that others see and sense something different in us … enough that they are compelled to inquire concerning the things they sense are different about us.
Do you pray? If so, would you ask God to help me live (from the inside out) in such a way that my life arouses the curiosity of those around me to such an extent that I might become a channel through which they may come to know God?
