I ran across an old email to a friend the other day that described an encounter that I had during Jury duty about four years ago. I thought maybe it was a story worth telling.

I had relished the idea of having jury duty because it is so seldom that I get the opportunity spend a whole day reading and so I had prepared by bringing several books. As soon as we got checked in and we were free to wander around a bit, I headed straight for the cafeteria and ordered a nice, tall cup of flavored hot coffee. I sat at a small table and started quietly reading. A young woman came up and asked if she could share my table. “Of course,” I replied, but part of me was slightly disappointed. I had wanted to read and now I was faced with a feeling that I couldn’t ignore someone sitting across from me at my table, especially since she didn’t appear to have a book of her own. Since she wasn’t reading and was just staring into space, I put down my book and made a comment about the good coffee. She instantly took my bait and we started up a conversation about jury duty. It was her first time, but I have a little experience with it, and so I was explaining to her what I knew to be the process.

During the conversation, I mentioned that I worked for the government, and she mentioned that she worked for our local community college. The world started getting smaller and smaller as the conversation progressed. She asked me if I knew someone that she knew worked at my office. She said that she took dance lessons with her, and I was delighted to find out that one of the people I spend most of my lunch hours with was in her dancing class. We continued our conversation until her group was called into a courtroom and I went back to reading momentarily.

That day, I was reading Brian McLaren’s “Finding Faith,” and it wasn’t really speaking to me because it seemed to be directed more toward people who were searching for faith. So, I put the book down for a moment to find her standing nearby again and I called her name. She came right over and sat down next to me. We started to talk again for a moment and suddenly she made a comment about my book. I was a little uncomfortable about it, but I vaguely told her what the book was about. She told me about her own book, which was about spirituality. It was a “new age” type of philosophy and she made a comment about how she believed that everyone was God. I was familiar with this ideology, but I didn’t really know how to respond. I made a comment that I didn’t believe in evangelizing people in a hard sell kind of way, but I did believe in affecting other people’s lives by being a good example. I remember that I sort of stuttered through the comment, and felt a little uncomfortable about the whole conversation so I let the conversation lapse into silence and I went back to my book while she stood there quietly flipping through the manual for her cell phone.

I mentally beat myself up several times over for being so uncomfortable with a conversation about faith, and once again not wanting to be rude, I put the book down and was about to make small talk when this guy sitting next to us on the other side made a strange joke analogy about Moses. It was something like, “I feel like Moses when he…” I can’t remember what it was, but I got a laugh out of it at the time, and I made a quick retort back, laughing, “Amen, brother!” Then we all laughed. I turned back to the woman and made small talk that lasted the rest of day. I kept thinking that my book was maybe something that she might want to read, and so as we were standing in line getting ready to file out, I offered her the book telling her that she might enjoy it. She, of course, politely turned down the offer.

I had forgotten about this interaction until I came across it last week, but I often have these types of unusual encounters with others. They aren’t clean and neat like one would expect or desire. They are often strange and unfinished and yet they tend to wander into peripheral faith-like conversations that seemingly go nowhere. At least, that’s how it seems to me. Maybe from God’s perspective, it looks much different.

Sometimes, it feels like I am a magnet that once it has attracted, doesn’t know what to do or even why it happened. I have decided to stop wondering and just enjoy it all. If something in me offers others a safety net, then I will embrace it and let it happen and let the beauty of God’s work unfold as He desires.