Changing the Atmosphere

I’m sitting in Costas. One of my favourite places to be where surrounded by strangers I feel like I’m with family, I can’t explain it but know that God has given me a love for the people I haven’t met before, who come and go there.

I’ve just spent two hours drinking coffee with a good friend who is hungry to see more of God, to know him more and to see the impossible become possible.

As we shared our dreams, our prayers, the things God has put on our hearts, the time went so quickly and I think we both felt the richness of the presence of God with us and on us.

I believe we affect the atmosphere around us as we share testimony and talk about the greatness of God

Just after my friend left, a lady came in and sat at the table next to me and started engaging in conversation with me. It seemed completely out of the blue and she told me three stories of how three complete strangers had recently shown her generosity either by paying for her when she had forgotten her purse, by returning some expensive sunglasses at great distance and cost to themselves and someone who found a ten pound note she had dropped and returned it to her. Her point was that there are more kind and honest people about than we think.

Why did she feel to share those encouraging stories with me? I’m not sure but I wonder if it was something to do with the atmosphere having been changed around where she was sitting.

I told her that I was a Christian and know that God is so generous that as his children he wants us to display his generosity to one another. She told me she was a Christian too and seemed to understand.

A few hours later I was in another café but this time with my husband who smiled at a man who passed our table. My husband’s smile led to a conversation where the man explained he would probably have to go home because he had forgotten his wallet. We offered to pay for his drink but he then remembered he’d left his wallet in the car in the car park. Today’s opportunities seemed to be all about money and being generous to a stranger.

The presence of God can be found not just in the church but in the market place too. We carry it! As the ark of God was carried and represented the presence of God, so we carry Christ… and his aroma brings the fragrance of the knowledge of him. It may be as we show kindness to someone who is struggling with lots of bags or a pram or bring physical touch or kind words and hope to someone who is upset or as we are drawn by his compassion to pray for someone. God with us and in us must bring peace, hope and healing because that is who he IS. He is generous, kind, full of mercy and truth. He brings hope to the hopeless, peace to the anxious, healing to the sick.