I have three posts lined up to write and I can’t write any of them. It has been such a long and such a confusing day that there’s no room for anything else. Yesterday I wrote about crying with others, and today I was given the opportunity to practice what I preach.

There are days when I feel that my life is filled with the mundane tasks that serve no purpose, that ministry is what happens to other people. Not today. Today ministry was the gut-wrenching stuff of life. By the time I hit breakfast-turned-into-lunch at 3:00 PM, I was used up by three different situations involving many different people. David and I wandered into Jeremy’s Starbucks, and that’s when God gave us a smile.

I sat texting in my own world when my friend, Garry Williams, a missional pastor here in town, sat down opposite me and said “God brings good things into our lives. In all the dysfunctions of life, he reminds us of the big picture.” Then he prayed over David and me. He didn’t even know what kind of a day we’d had. He didn’t know that God was asking me to cry with so many different people in my life today. But he knew that God had taken a random meeting in a Third Place and given him a job to do. And he did it. The rest of the day wasn’t any different, but my heart was.

Thank you, Garry. I don’t think you read this, but thank you anyway.