Durruck
Pirate!
The Woman At The Coffee Bar
By Jon Walker
(Today’s devotional is a little different, and a little longer than usual. May God use it to draw you to more intimate worship with him – jw)
Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” (John 4:21, NIV)
The sound system played a soft and obscure tune from several years back. Gregory Glaner couldn’t remember exactly what year it was from, but that’s one of the reasons he came to this coffee bar: The music challenged his memory and gave voice to his emotions.
He was a regular at mid-morning, after the dawn patrol had marched off to their daily routines and before the lunch platoon pressed the counters for a pick-me-up latte. He could sit with his 1% Grande almond – only three pumps, please – and gather his thoughts without a sense of any urgency. Some days it was so quiet he could hear the ceiling fans keeping time with the music.
As he was contemplating the coming weekend’s worship service, he looked over to see the barista wiping tables near him. With doe-like brown eyes, she seemed to be staring at him.
"Hi, am I in your way this morning?" asked Gregory.
"Oh, no,” she said. "I was just trying to figure out where I know you from, but it just came to me. You’re the pastor from the church on Bradford Drive.”
Gregory smiled his pastor smile.
"I visited there once,” she said.
"What did you think?” asked Gregory.
“Oh, it was nice. You’re a good preacher …” she trailed off.
“But …” Gregory smiled, sensing she wanted to say more.
“Oh, you know, it’s a nice church; it’s just not for me,” she said.
“Okay, that’s fine, but I always want to hear ways to improve, so tell me what kept you from coming back,” said Gregory.
“Well, no offense, you know, but I just thought you were sort of stuck in a worship rut,” she said. Her tone of voice indicated she wasn’t intending to be mean.
Gregory laughed. “Okay, what do you mean? We didn’t sing enough praise and worship choruses?”
“No, it’s not that … well, but then that is kind of what I mean,” she said. “I got the impression that you guys think worshiping God is all wrapped up in a one-hour church service on Sunday mornings, and it’s so much more than that.”
“But we do teach people that worship is more than Sunday morning,” Gregory said. “In fact, we’re offering a discipleship study right now on that very subject.”
“Well, no doubt, but …” she said. “Mmmm, well, it’s just what you do, or I guess more appropriately, what you don’t do, or at least appear to do, which is worship in all sorts of settings. No matter what is said, or taught, the emphasis is always on worship as a Sunday morning thing. In fact, you – well, I mean pastors in general – feed the myth by saying there’s a designated worship time in each service, as if you stop worshiping to then listen to the sermon or something.”
She added, “Then you even call certain songs worship songs, like, you know, music is supposed to be segregated into categories: sing this and you’re worshiping, but sing that and you’re doing what? Reciting doctrine?”
“I think what I’m saying,” she said, “and I think about this a lot, is that I think you can worship any time and anywhere, and we need to emphasize that more. You don’t need to be in a church on Sunday morning to worship.”
“So, are you one of those who says the guy out fishing on a Sunday morning can be worshiping God?” asked Gregory.
“Well, no … actually, in a way, yes,” she said. “See, that’s really just a straw-man argument, isn’t it? I mean, the issue in that anecdote is the forsaking of the assembly, and that’s not what I’m suggesting at all. So, no, I’m not saying that a guy who spends every Sunday morning fishing, instead of going to church, is apt to be drawing closer to God and is engaging in an act of worship.”
“But,” she added, "I do think you could have a worship experience out there fishing because,” and here she changed her voice just slightly, “the time has come when it will not matter where you worship.”
“The woman at the well,” laughed Gregory.
“Yeah, I guess you could call me her great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter or something, and I’ll tell you that grandma took the words of Jesus to heart,” said the barista.
She added: “That woman went back to her village and said, ‘Come meet a man who knows all about me,’ and she embraced that Christ-grace so deeply that everything she did was an act of worship.”
“Eugene Peterson, inThe Message, says, ‘It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Father is looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship,’ and that’s a lot more than getting happy on a Sunday morning,” she said.
“That means when I’m being real, that’s an act of worship to God,” she said. “And standing there on a Sunday morning, singing the right hymn at the right time, and calling it worship, doesn’t necessarily make it so.”
“Would it surprise you if I told you that I once had a worship experience while watching a movie?” she suddenly asked, and then continued without waiting for a response.
“It’s true; I was watching ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ the first film, when they start the journey, and I found myself worshiping God as I watched Frodo struggle to accept the burden he’d been given to carry. My mother, she has Alzheimer’s, and it hasn’t been easy,” said the barista, as tears began to trickle from her eyes.
Gregory reached out and touched her arm. “My grandmother had Alzheimer’s,” he said. “It is,” he paused, “difficult.”
“Preach on, brother,” the barista said, half-smiling as she wiped her wet face. “You know this worship thing, you could start with Romans 12; that’s all about worship, even though you wouldn’t know it the way some preachers swing it around like a giant set of God-rules to keep.”
“In The Message, it says, ‘So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him,’” she said.
“To me that, like, means if I live my life the way God wants me to and I embrace my shape – the person he’s made me to be – then just living my life is an act of worship,” she said.
“I think I understand your point,” said Gregory, “It’s like in the movie, ‘Chariots of Fire.’ Eric Liddell, the guy the movie was about; he was an Olympic runner and a devout Christian, and he said, ‘When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.’ He knew God had created him with the gift to run, and so he pleased God by running.”
“Exactly,” she said, “And pleasing God is an act of worship; living your everyday, ordinary life can be an act of worship, if you exhibit an attitude of gratitude.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like a preacher,” Gregory laughed.
“I get so excited just thinking about it,” the barista said. “Do you know Beth Moore, the Bible teacher?”
Gregory nodded.
“I was at one of her seminars once, and she told this story about finding a razor,” she said. “She wasin Birmingham or some place like that, and it was late at night and she had to shave her legs, but when she looked through her travel bag, she couldn’t find her razor. She figured her 15-year-old daughter had borrowed it and forgotten to put it back.”
“She burst into tears,” the barista said. “Believe me, it’s a woman-thing. Anyway, she’s crying and she goes to bed, and then about three o’clock in the morning, she wakes up and she senses the Holy Spirit is telling her to look in the gift basket that the conference hostess left in the hotel room.”
“Beth looks in the basket, and there is one of those little disposable razors,” said the barista.
“And so she falls to her knees and starts praising the God of the Universe for supplying her every need, including a cheap, plastic razor in a gift basket,” she laughs. “The God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and spoke the world into existence is also capable of supplying a cheap plastic razor in our time of need.”
“Oh, my God,” she adds in a mock Valley Girl voice. “Literally, oh my God! But here’s my point, Beth’s response was an act of worship; an act of worship thanks to a silly razor, a disposable razor.”
“Take your everyday life and place it before God,” said Gregory, paraphrasing The Message. “Embracing what God does for you ….”
“That’s it,” said the barista. “It’s loving from the center of who you are, so that your life becomes an act of worship. Listen, I have a friend who’s really impatient, and one day he was rushing into a McDonald’s and the Holy Spirit tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Practice playing second-fiddle,’ which is how Eugene Peterson translates part of Romans 12; I think verse 10 or 11.”
“So my friend stops and he holds the door open for a family coming up behind him,” she said. “And when he finally gets in line, he notices that he gets his burgers about 45 seconds after the people he let in front of him. And he’s thinking, ‘What does it matter in eternity that it took me an extra minute to get my burgers?’”
“But he also told me that he realized that holding that door open was an act of worship because he was doing it as asacrificial act for God,” she said. “That’s a far cry from Sunday morning worship, yet it’s the heart of worship.”
“You’ve got me thinking about a monk named Brother Lawrence,” said Gregory. “He got assigned to perpetual kitchen duty in the monastery, but God taught him that even the most menial tasks – things like preparing meals and washing dishes – could also be acts of worship.”
“He said worship wasn’t about changing what you do, but about changing your attitude toward what you do,” said Gregory. “Take what you normally do for yourself and start doing it for God, and it becomes an act of worship. I’ve tried to convince my wife that she has an opportunity to worship God every time she changes the baby’s diaper, and that I don’t want to deprive her of that special worship time!”
“And I agree with you, our emphasis in the church today has become this thing of having to ‘get away’ from our daily routine in order to really worship God, yet we should emphasize practicing his presence all the time,” said Gregory.
The barista said, “That’s really the greatest commandment, isn’t it? ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ I think that teaches that anytime you express love to God, you’re worshiping.”
“And it doesn’t matter where you are, or when it is, which is just about where this conversation started,” Gregory said.
“I appreciate this food for thought,” he added, seeing some costumers coming in. “I’m Gregory, by the way.”
“Samantha,” she said. “Samantha, the Samaritan woman at the … well, coffeebar,” she said with a laugh.
“I’d better get back to Latte Land.”
© 2007 Jon Walker. All rights reserved
The above content is provided in its entirety from purposedrivenlife.com and used with the full permission of the website. Additional archives of the Purpose Driven Life devotionals can be found in their archive.
By Jon Walker
(Today’s devotional is a little different, and a little longer than usual. May God use it to draw you to more intimate worship with him – jw)
Jesus declared, "Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.” (John 4:21, NIV)
The sound system played a soft and obscure tune from several years back. Gregory Glaner couldn’t remember exactly what year it was from, but that’s one of the reasons he came to this coffee bar: The music challenged his memory and gave voice to his emotions.
He was a regular at mid-morning, after the dawn patrol had marched off to their daily routines and before the lunch platoon pressed the counters for a pick-me-up latte. He could sit with his 1% Grande almond – only three pumps, please – and gather his thoughts without a sense of any urgency. Some days it was so quiet he could hear the ceiling fans keeping time with the music.
As he was contemplating the coming weekend’s worship service, he looked over to see the barista wiping tables near him. With doe-like brown eyes, she seemed to be staring at him.
"Hi, am I in your way this morning?" asked Gregory.
"Oh, no,” she said. "I was just trying to figure out where I know you from, but it just came to me. You’re the pastor from the church on Bradford Drive.”
Gregory smiled his pastor smile.
"I visited there once,” she said.
"What did you think?” asked Gregory.
“Oh, it was nice. You’re a good preacher …” she trailed off.
“But …” Gregory smiled, sensing she wanted to say more.
“Oh, you know, it’s a nice church; it’s just not for me,” she said.
“Okay, that’s fine, but I always want to hear ways to improve, so tell me what kept you from coming back,” said Gregory.
“Well, no offense, you know, but I just thought you were sort of stuck in a worship rut,” she said. Her tone of voice indicated she wasn’t intending to be mean.
Gregory laughed. “Okay, what do you mean? We didn’t sing enough praise and worship choruses?”
“No, it’s not that … well, but then that is kind of what I mean,” she said. “I got the impression that you guys think worshiping God is all wrapped up in a one-hour church service on Sunday mornings, and it’s so much more than that.”
“But we do teach people that worship is more than Sunday morning,” Gregory said. “In fact, we’re offering a discipleship study right now on that very subject.”
“Well, no doubt, but …” she said. “Mmmm, well, it’s just what you do, or I guess more appropriately, what you don’t do, or at least appear to do, which is worship in all sorts of settings. No matter what is said, or taught, the emphasis is always on worship as a Sunday morning thing. In fact, you – well, I mean pastors in general – feed the myth by saying there’s a designated worship time in each service, as if you stop worshiping to then listen to the sermon or something.”
She added, “Then you even call certain songs worship songs, like, you know, music is supposed to be segregated into categories: sing this and you’re worshiping, but sing that and you’re doing what? Reciting doctrine?”
“I think what I’m saying,” she said, “and I think about this a lot, is that I think you can worship any time and anywhere, and we need to emphasize that more. You don’t need to be in a church on Sunday morning to worship.”
“So, are you one of those who says the guy out fishing on a Sunday morning can be worshiping God?” asked Gregory.
“Well, no … actually, in a way, yes,” she said. “See, that’s really just a straw-man argument, isn’t it? I mean, the issue in that anecdote is the forsaking of the assembly, and that’s not what I’m suggesting at all. So, no, I’m not saying that a guy who spends every Sunday morning fishing, instead of going to church, is apt to be drawing closer to God and is engaging in an act of worship.”
“But,” she added, "I do think you could have a worship experience out there fishing because,” and here she changed her voice just slightly, “the time has come when it will not matter where you worship.”
“The woman at the well,” laughed Gregory.
“Yeah, I guess you could call me her great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter or something, and I’ll tell you that grandma took the words of Jesus to heart,” said the barista.
She added: “That woman went back to her village and said, ‘Come meet a man who knows all about me,’ and she embraced that Christ-grace so deeply that everything she did was an act of worship.”
“Eugene Peterson, inThe Message, says, ‘It's who you are and the way you live that count before God. Your worship must engage your spirit in the pursuit of truth. That's the kind of people the Father is looking for: those who are simply and honestly themselves before him in their worship,’ and that’s a lot more than getting happy on a Sunday morning,” she said.
“That means when I’m being real, that’s an act of worship to God,” she said. “And standing there on a Sunday morning, singing the right hymn at the right time, and calling it worship, doesn’t necessarily make it so.”
“Would it surprise you if I told you that I once had a worship experience while watching a movie?” she suddenly asked, and then continued without waiting for a response.
“It’s true; I was watching ‘The Lord of the Rings,’ the first film, when they start the journey, and I found myself worshiping God as I watched Frodo struggle to accept the burden he’d been given to carry. My mother, she has Alzheimer’s, and it hasn’t been easy,” said the barista, as tears began to trickle from her eyes.
Gregory reached out and touched her arm. “My grandmother had Alzheimer’s,” he said. “It is,” he paused, “difficult.”
“Preach on, brother,” the barista said, half-smiling as she wiped her wet face. “You know this worship thing, you could start with Romans 12; that’s all about worship, even though you wouldn’t know it the way some preachers swing it around like a giant set of God-rules to keep.”
“In The Message, it says, ‘So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life – your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him,’” she said.
“To me that, like, means if I live my life the way God wants me to and I embrace my shape – the person he’s made me to be – then just living my life is an act of worship,” she said.
“I think I understand your point,” said Gregory, “It’s like in the movie, ‘Chariots of Fire.’ Eric Liddell, the guy the movie was about; he was an Olympic runner and a devout Christian, and he said, ‘When I run, I feel God’s pleasure.’ He knew God had created him with the gift to run, and so he pleased God by running.”
“Exactly,” she said, “And pleasing God is an act of worship; living your everyday, ordinary life can be an act of worship, if you exhibit an attitude of gratitude.”
“Now you’re starting to sound like a preacher,” Gregory laughed.
“I get so excited just thinking about it,” the barista said. “Do you know Beth Moore, the Bible teacher?”
Gregory nodded.
“I was at one of her seminars once, and she told this story about finding a razor,” she said. “She wasin Birmingham or some place like that, and it was late at night and she had to shave her legs, but when she looked through her travel bag, she couldn’t find her razor. She figured her 15-year-old daughter had borrowed it and forgotten to put it back.”
“She burst into tears,” the barista said. “Believe me, it’s a woman-thing. Anyway, she’s crying and she goes to bed, and then about three o’clock in the morning, she wakes up and she senses the Holy Spirit is telling her to look in the gift basket that the conference hostess left in the hotel room.”
“Beth looks in the basket, and there is one of those little disposable razors,” said the barista.
“And so she falls to her knees and starts praising the God of the Universe for supplying her every need, including a cheap, plastic razor in a gift basket,” she laughs. “The God who owns the cattle on a thousand hills and spoke the world into existence is also capable of supplying a cheap plastic razor in our time of need.”
“Oh, my God,” she adds in a mock Valley Girl voice. “Literally, oh my God! But here’s my point, Beth’s response was an act of worship; an act of worship thanks to a silly razor, a disposable razor.”
“Take your everyday life and place it before God,” said Gregory, paraphrasing The Message. “Embracing what God does for you ….”
“That’s it,” said the barista. “It’s loving from the center of who you are, so that your life becomes an act of worship. Listen, I have a friend who’s really impatient, and one day he was rushing into a McDonald’s and the Holy Spirit tapped him on the shoulder and said, ‘Practice playing second-fiddle,’ which is how Eugene Peterson translates part of Romans 12; I think verse 10 or 11.”
“So my friend stops and he holds the door open for a family coming up behind him,” she said. “And when he finally gets in line, he notices that he gets his burgers about 45 seconds after the people he let in front of him. And he’s thinking, ‘What does it matter in eternity that it took me an extra minute to get my burgers?’”
“But he also told me that he realized that holding that door open was an act of worship because he was doing it as asacrificial act for God,” she said. “That’s a far cry from Sunday morning worship, yet it’s the heart of worship.”
“You’ve got me thinking about a monk named Brother Lawrence,” said Gregory. “He got assigned to perpetual kitchen duty in the monastery, but God taught him that even the most menial tasks – things like preparing meals and washing dishes – could also be acts of worship.”
“He said worship wasn’t about changing what you do, but about changing your attitude toward what you do,” said Gregory. “Take what you normally do for yourself and start doing it for God, and it becomes an act of worship. I’ve tried to convince my wife that she has an opportunity to worship God every time she changes the baby’s diaper, and that I don’t want to deprive her of that special worship time!”
“And I agree with you, our emphasis in the church today has become this thing of having to ‘get away’ from our daily routine in order to really worship God, yet we should emphasize practicing his presence all the time,” said Gregory.
The barista said, “That’s really the greatest commandment, isn’t it? ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ I think that teaches that anytime you express love to God, you’re worshiping.”
“And it doesn’t matter where you are, or when it is, which is just about where this conversation started,” Gregory said.
“I appreciate this food for thought,” he added, seeing some costumers coming in. “I’m Gregory, by the way.”
“Samantha,” she said. “Samantha, the Samaritan woman at the … well, coffeebar,” she said with a laugh.
“I’d better get back to Latte Land.”
© 2007 Jon Walker. All rights reserved
The above content is provided in its entirety from purposedrivenlife.com and used with the full permission of the website. Additional archives of the Purpose Driven Life devotionals can be found in their archive.