Long 12-hour day at the conference. I’m tired, but I’m hungry as I barely ate dinner at the trade show.

I go down to the hotel restaurant and all the tables are taken.

There’s another trainer I met once about 4 years back waiting as well. The bar just had two seats open up so we decide to sit down together and chat over a beer and a bite.

We then get into a deep conversation about God. We definitely disagree on many theological matters. But that doesn’t matter. We share ideas, talked about what’s going on in the world, toss around verses and examine what the other believes with the joy of knowing neither one of us has an agenda to be right. Rather it was a discovery of “Why do you believe that?” and “What about this?”

It was definitely one of those divine appointments that no one could have planned.

As we’re about to stand up and leave, the bartender says, “You know, I was busy serving everyone else at the bar, but I kept coming back to hear your guys’ discussion, and it really got me thinking. All I hear every shift is people coming to the bar complaining about life, talking about who they’re sleeping with, or whatever other superficial thing in life that doesn’t matter. And you guys are in a deep discussion on who God is and what His love looks like in the world. I’ve never heard a discussion like that before, it was very interesting and I enjoyed it, thanks”.

And then he ran off to his next order without a chance for us to really respond.

And now I sit here thinking. The USA is known as a Christian nation, and yet this man has never heard a discussion of who God is and what His love looks like. And tonight he listened to two grown men talk about it for about two hours, and neither one of us knew we had an audience soaking it all up.

Now I’m kind of laughing inside as I type this thinking God can use anyone to tell this bartender about who He is. And yet, He arranged for two strangers who travelled from opposite ends of North America to come to eat at the same place and time and sit at the only two seats that just opened up in the place to do it.

I can’t help but be amused.