When customers enter our ChickFilA, they are greeted and then we add, “I can serve you here” to indicate that our register is open.  As I take orders, fill drinks,and chat the conversation is surface stuff.  In a small city like ours, it is easy to assume that our customers live and/or work in our community, have ordinary lives with ordinary circumstances, and move on.  But when I really have time to listen, it is amazing what I hear.  Just today I served a woman and her daughter on their way to see the other daughter, who was having a baby and having complications, several teenagers who were stressing about their standardized tests today, a young man who was having a big job interview, and an 8 year old who is still in 1st grade because “I got held back”.  There was also a newly single mom whose husband just walked out on her, and a new mom of a new doctor in town who is still feeling lonely and missing her family back home terribly. All of these needed food, but they also needed a human touch and a listening ear.

I came away from today SO wishing that we had at least one “register” at every church where someone was standing there saying, “I can serve you here!”  When we go to church week after week, and see so many of the same people, it is very hard to stop and really listen to what is going on with each other.  We make a lot of assumptions about other people’s lives based on what we are experiencing, and in doing that we miss a lot of opportunities to connect with each other and minister.  And that is also, unfortunately, when we are the least like Jesus. He made it a point to look beyond the surface, and to meet the deepest needs of those He met. I want to be like that.  As the quote above says, I am one – and there is a lot that I can do to help those around me.  May we all begin to make that our goal!