HOW TO FLUSH YOUR SPIRITUAL PIPES

By Ken Glassmeyer

No matter how long I do outreach, I am often surprised at how much impact serving others actually has on our own spiritual health. When we feed the poor, or do some small gesture of kindness, not only are we giving them a small taste of the kingdom, we get refreshed spiritually as well.

I have heard more than one pastor use the metaphor that we are a conduit or pipeline for God’s grace when we let Him flow through us to others.


Sometimes, when that grace sprays through us, it clean our pipes.

This fall, I had my hot water heater fail on me. I live in an area that has extremely hard water, and frugal skeptic that I am, I have always resisted getting a water softener. I am also not the most knowledgeable guy when it comes to home repair. Little did I know that you are actually supposed drain and flush your hot water heater and lines at least once per year, because calcium, lime, and other minerals in hard water will calcify and gunk up your taps, fixtures pipes, and even the hot water heater itself.


In my case I went 15 years without ever having the heater serviced. At first, I noticed white grit in the aerators and reduced flow from the tap. Then a few weeks later every hot water line in the house slowed to a mere trickle. After a few thousand dollars and few days with a plumber, my lines were very clear, I had a new hot water heater, and a softener. I had to help the plumber carry the old heater out of the house because it had over sixty pounds of sediment that had built up over the years. All of this could have been avoided through the simple discipline of flushing my plumbing from time to time.

Can’t the same thing be said for making outreach a regular habit in our lives?

Maybe it goes back to the idea of a man with no shoes suddenly being very happy with his life when he meets a man with no feet. When we serve people that are more impoverished than us, whether it be emotional, spiritual, or fiscal poverty, it helps put our life in perspective. It flushes our spiritual pipes and gets the gunk out.

I had a similar experience with my personal ministry right around the same time the hot water heater went out. Even though most folks assume I do outreach almost as often as I breathe, it does not really come natural to me. If truth be told, I am not a very nice person. I am actually kind of jerk. In fact, that is proof that effective servant evangelism is absolutely dependent on God’s kindness--not my politeness. Serving others does not come naturally to me. It might look that way if you were elbow to elbow with me doing ministry, but you aren’t seeing me in my natural element. You are seeing the power of God’s kindness transform me on the spot as it flows through me to those I am serving.

As such, sometimes I get in a funk. Sometimes, I slack off with regard to ministry. Weeks and months can slide by, and then I can spiral into a really funky spiritual place. I was in such a place this fall. I had a few serious set backs in my personal life, a few deaths and illnesses in the family, and a number of financial problems. While I wasn’t shaking my fist at God, we weren’t exactly on the best speaking terms. I certainly was in no mood to serve other people, much less be cordial toward them.

I am real big fan of Harry Chapin, and if you happen to have his Greatest Hits CD around, put it in. There is a little rant he goes on between two of his songs where he talks about the ludicrousness of churches and schools getting excited about feeding the poor around Thanksgiving: “sure they eat good for one or two days off of your food drive, but what are they going to eat the rest of the year?”

I happened to be listening to it in the car and it occurred to me, that not only do the impoverished go hungry the rest of the year, some of us get spiritually lazy the rest of the year. Before I heard the CD, I had not only skipped several planned church outreaches, I had even slowed down my personal servant evangelism. I wasn’t “making my rounds” as Steve Sjogren often teaches: simply follow your daily routine, but be attentive and ready to serve the people you meet as you run daily errands and go about your normal business.

My pipes were clogged.

I had actually even thought about skipping my church’s annual Turkeyfest, an event I helped start and refine over twenty-five years ago.

I was in a funk, and while I know and have often taught others that the best way to get out of a funk is to serve others. I didn’t want to. I conjured a hundred reasons not to join Turkeyfest. Spiritual inertia had set in.

It was a very rough autumn. My grandmother had just died just as I was finally really getting to know her and visit with her regularly. Sadly, I'm still a bit unsure just where she landed on the Engle scale before dying. I felt spiritually impotent. Here I was, a type of outreach guru, and I couldn’t even witness effectively to my mostly unsaved family. The rest of my family are pretty dang near the bottom of that same Engel scale. They have a casual awareness that there is a God, but they aren’t Him. It pretty much ends there with regards to faith with most of my family members.

Then my mom was attacked by the third type of cancer she has encountered in two decades: breast cancer, skin cancer, and now finally fatal stage four renal cell carcinoma. She is way down in Florida and, living in Ohio, I can't really see her as much as I would like to. She has less than six months left. There's a bit more. . .I am sterile, yet changed that into a passion for being a teacher and I was pretty good at it and even won a few awards, but then I had a heart attack breaking up a fight at school and I was diagnosed with severe CHF and forced to retire early.

I spent a great amount of time in and out the hospital and have several pieces of my anatomy sliced, diced, and removed. I tried to get healthier, but with a heart that works with less than 30% efficiency, my days in the classroom were over.

I threw myself into ministry becoming an outreach maniac and even became the editor of a national magazine dedicated to teaching folks around the world how to do two things:

1) Notice the needs of people
2) Help them notice God that is overjoyed to meet those needs for them

Sadly that groove only lasted a couple of years. Due to medical pension stipulations, I had to resign. In fact I had to curb all of my organized ministry endeavors for I am no longer able to lead or instruct others formally—even as a volunteer. I now have to submit a report to the state board delineating my activities proving that I am not doing any form of leading others; I can't even teach a Bible study or lead a small group. All this for the joy of collecting 21.25% of my final year’s salary—before taxes.

Then I found out I have a brain chemistry problem that the doctors still have not put their finger on. I have become a test subject for pharmaceutical companies, only I am paying them, rather than them paying me as they try medication after medication to stabilize my brain chemistry. Quite possibly it is never going to be fixed and could be a result of all the other medications I take for my Congestive Heart Failure; Hypertension and the fact that I no longer have part of my intestinal tract and stomach.

Some mornings I wake up and wonder why Job was being such a cry-baby.

In other words, I still love God because He is my Father, but lately I haven't been in the mood to talk to him very much and being around people that are more "cheery" than me makes me even edgier than some of you have ever seen me, and if you thought me rude and brusque before, I am down right spiritually cantankerous at the moment. . .kinda like a crotchety Christian Dennis Miller who thinks he is funnier and smarter than he really is, and says everything he is thinking out loud. So I began to stay away from gatherings so I am not toxic to others.

My spiritual pipes weren’t just clogged—they were backed up.

Anyway, I was almost in such a funk that I dang near took a pass on handing out turkeys this year, causing me to miss my first Turkeyfest. . .well since before we really didn't have a name for it. Back when we started it in the late 1980’s we just all pitched in out of our own pocket, loaded up a few pickup trucks with frozen turkeys, stuffing, canned goods, pumpkin pies and just doing the best a group of loving amateurs could do to hand out mercy and kindness from the back of a tailgate.

Twenty five years later and we were feeding over a thousand families each Thanksgiving—with a really nice spread. I was going to bail on it.

Then two things changed my mind.

1) I heard a rumor that we might revisit the "old-school model" and have a bit more freedom to freelance/pray and stretch a few atrophied prophetic muscles and find random families to serve as the Lord led rather than use leads (with triplicate paperwork) from a social services agency making us little more than pizza delivery boys. One time last year I was yelled at by the person I gave the turkey dinner to, that I bought out of my pocket, because I was ten minutes late arriving.

2) My youngest nephew, Adam, would be joining us for his first Turkeyfest. This precocious young man is the life of any party: a kid that is two parts scoundrel and three parts saint. You never know what is going to come out of his mouth, but more times than not it would be profound and sometimes even holy.

We reduced down, not going with a larger group this year; just our little extended family of me, my wife, and some of my inlaws. They are Catholic, but let me tell you, that particular faith has forgotten more about service and kindness than any cutting edge parachurch you can name. We bought two turkey dinners to give away. (The organizers at my church provided heavy-duty laundry baskets (This is an awesome idea by the way—it holds a great deal of food and a full-sized turkey without breaking, and can be used to do laundry later!) and we just went to the store and filled it with a Thanksgiving bounty including a good sized bird.

The worship was awesome, but I had to chuckle when little Adam leaned into his mother's shoulder and said: "Uhhmm, mom, I think we went to the wrong place cause this sure ain't no Catholic church."

It was going to be a good day.

We drove through Lincoln Heights with our turkeys. The landscape has sure changed since the days of the white bus and food runs I used to organize in this impoverished neighborhood when I was on staff over twenty years ago. The entire place has been gentrified, but if you look close, you can still see the hidden poverty sprinkled around all the new condominiums city planners put in when the bulldozed the eight block grid housing project. I almost go lost.

As we were driving down Chamberlain Ave. little Adam was inspired: "Uncle Kenny, Instead of driving around all day and looking at houses, why don't we just stop and ask that lady if she knows anybody that is hungry--she looks like she knows where we should go with the food."

I look over and there is a single mom trying to load her car with a ton of laundry in plastic bags as she also herded two young kids. I hop out of the van and help her load her car introduce myself and ask her if she "knows of any families in the neighborhood going through a bad time that could maybe use an thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings?"

She stared and me blankly for a moment and started crying and pointed to the door of the house. "I don't live here--that's my dad's place," is all she said, but kept crying.

I motioned to the van and we all carried the pies and stuffing and potatoes and turkey etc inside to meet Marcus and his grandson Javonian.

Marcus explained that his wife had just recently passed and he was trying to make things okay, but it was real rough on the family. To make matters worse, the heater was out, his car was broke, and he was about to lose his job. On top of all that, his wife had always put out a large spread for the family at Thanksgiving, but not only did he not have a clue how to cook, he didn't have the money to afford such a spread.

I started to show him that we had even gave him some basic cooking directions and showed him the cooking tips guide in the basket, but he stopped me. He pointed out the window at his daughter, “She won't come in here right now 'cause she’s mad at me and the rest of the world. She can cook just like her ma could though, so we are good there. Don't worry. She’ll come around. She just knows we’re about to do church in this living room, and that is probably more than she could bear right now.”

Adam frowned up at the man, "Why is she mad?"

"Well. . ." tears welled up in his eyes, but he laughed, "we were just arguing this morning about what to do about Thanksgiving this year, and I told her I would pray and God would provide--then you all showed up a few minutes later. She ain't really mad-mad, she just knows it is time to get right with God again, you know? You folks showing up is just God messing around with her--and some folks don’t think God has a great sense of humor," Marcus smiled down at Adam as he wiped a tear from his face. “Little man, you and your kin are an answer to prayers this morning,” and with that Marcus grabbed all our hands and we did church in his living room.

We prayed for Marcus and his grandson while his daughter lingered and watched with curiosity from the porch. Then Adam tugged on my jeans: "Aren't you going to pray for his heater?"

I picked up the broken thermostat in my hand and Adam covered it with his and we prayed that God would "send a friend over that could help him hook it back up right." The phone rang just as we were leaving. It was a friend of Marcus calling to see what would be a good time to come over and rewire the thermostat that had been lying on the floor.

My pipes are clean now.

Ghost, Goblins, and Demons?

Happy Halloween!  Yeah, you heard me, I said the H-word.  As I grow in “maturity”  (those of you that know me stop snickering) I can’t help but to look back and reflect on my various responses to this most perplexing holiday over the years.  I have run the gamet between handing out tracks instead of candy to hiding deep in my house with all the lights off and the doors locked, to organizing my church’s alternative “Harvest Party” to what I now feel is the best response for all Christians:

SERVE YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD!

I am not pulling any punches here folks.  Life is too short.  Recently I was approached by a brother in Christ to volunteer at the “Hell House” that his church is hosting.  Apparently, if I got the gist right, they intend to literally scare the HELL out of people.  The plan is to have a “christian-themed” haunted house of sorts that shows the horrors of abortion, drunk driving, premarital sex as rape, and the rampant crime and drug use of urban areas.  Now don’t get me me wrong these are all important issues that need to be addressed by the church, but I simply can’t wrap my head around this approach.  Is this type of boom and doom delivery, Holy Spirit with a shotgun approach ever effective?  I want to keep an open mind, so please do write me if you have success with such an event, but I just don’t see it working in my community.  Maybe I am wrong, but it just seems to be devoid of both common sense and Godliness to purposely plan to offend and scare people into the kingdom.

The thing was, he tried to sell me on this notion by calling it “spiritual warfare” and joing the ranks of the front line to gain territory in kingdom.  I am a older believer and he was making me uncomfortable with his demeanor.  I can only imagine the way such an aggressive evangelistic posture would be interpreted by the unchurched–his targeted demographic.

I tried to calmly dissuade him.  He wasn’t having any of it.  I think he walked away looking at me as a coward, afraid to wage war against the enemy.  It really got me thinking about this whole notion of warfare.  As believers, we have access to an incredible array of weapons to use when warring with darkness.  I just happen to think we can skip the racks holding the lances, pikes, and maces.

I would rather pick from the shelves that hold the toilet brushes, rakes, buckets and sponges.  Nothing irks me more than being around people that see a demon lurking at every turn and want to blame whatever is going on wrong at their church on spiritual warfare.  These same good-intentioned folks will then use that as some excuse to begin, as Rick Joyner often describes, “shouting down devils and throwing hatchets at the moon.” All this type of behavior generally results in is getting a severe headache from the hatchet blade landing back on your forehead.  You might as well be spitting in a fan. Don’t get me wrong, there is plenty of room for intense intercession, the pulling down of strongholds, and yes, at times, full-scale deliverance.  The Kingdom is a strange place.  It is both physical and spiritual.  You need to battle in the heavens AND here on the ground. What I want to introduce you to is something that transcends traditional spiritual warfare.  It is called it servant warfare:

Pray while you work!
The problem with most forms of what many call spiritual warfare is that it is primarily based on big tent revival models.  Gone wrong it can generate more fear and mysticism than is healthy.  When it becomes insular it can become downright toxic to your church.  Rather than mostly spin your wheels with hocus pocus and mumbo jumbo from a folding chair in the basement of a church, do something proactive–SERVE!

Look at the model Jesus demonstrated.  He was out and about serving people even as he “warred in the heavens.”  It is a balanced blend of practical action and prayer that is the most effective weapon to use against our enemy.  By the way, permit me one comical observation; have you ever noticed that the spiritual warfare mystics will actually esteem Satan?  They give him an honor that is undeserved when they mix in the drama.  They almost remind me of the characters in a Harry Potter novel with their constant “those followers of the name that can not be named” nonsense.  It isn’t lost on me that they probably never even sniffed at J.K. Rowling novel, to understand what I am saying here.  While they were protesting and condemning the books, I was handing out drinks, candy and bookmarks to people that stood in line at midnight at bookstores to get the newest edition.

See, the majority of what people label as spiritual warfare tends to be based in human emotion.  It is nothing short of melodrama.   I am sorry if I am stepping on toes here, but life is simply too short to pull punches on this topic.

If you really believe you are under some form of spiritual attack, what better way to fight back than to get the all powerful sword of the Holy Spirit in your hands:  a toilet brush!

That’s right, I said it.  I am not trying to be vulgar, or irreverent.  I am very serious.  Pray in tongues while you swirl your brush in the porcelain pits of the worst dens of iniquity in your city.  Have a problem in your city with adult bookstores and strip clubs?  Don’t make a public protest rally with hand-painted signs and lame cheers.  Instead, quietly go and offer to clean the restrooms of these places and do it with a smile on your face.  You name the evil that may be lurking in your town, and I will find you a service outreach for the purveyors of that evil.  See vile sinners need Jesus just as much as you do, and what better way is there to demonstrate the kingdom to these folks than to lay down all your nonsense and show them real life sacrificial love? This Halloween I intend to get out of my house, turn the lights on, perhaps sit at the end of my driveway with a nice comfortable fire in the mobile fireplace and have fresh steaming cider for the adults and the best candy in the neighborhood for the kids. 

I plan to make my home a little taste of heaven on earth on Halloween and offer an alternative to rebuke and evangelical outrage: KINDNESS! Will you join me?

The Good Cincinnatian

A man was traveling from Crestview Hills to West Chester.  On the way he ran low on gas and pulled off the I-75 looking for a gas station.  The one he thought was open from the highway had already closed, so he drove a little further down the road and within a few turns realized he was lost in a what looked like a rough part of town.  He saw a group of teenagers on the corner and rolled down his window and stopped to ask for directions.  Before he could even say hello to the young men he was yanked from his car, beaten, carjacked, and left for dead on the curb.  With the one eye that was not beaten closed he watched the taillights of his car vanish deeper into the city wondering if they would get far enough away that they would not come back and finish the job once they realized his car was just about out of gas.

Jack, a pastor of a large influential suburban church drove past on his way home from a meeting of the Cincinnati Ecumenical Symposium on Social Justice.  He remembered thinking at the meeting his church needed to do more to increase the awareness of his parishioners of the effects of poverty and disenfranchisement on the whole city, not just their neighborhood.  Those thoughts were confirmed.  This once glorious neighborhood, rich in tradition and heritage was in a shambles.  Many of the businesses were boarded up.  Most of the homes were in disrepair. The people on the street corners seemed to be ambling through life like zombies.  This all broke his heart.  Jack made a mental note to add this imagery he was taking in for next weekend’s sermon on the call of their church to social justice in the city.  This had gone on long enough.  

He stopped for a red light and grimaced at the loud sounds coming from a bar on the corner. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man laying in the street, obviously drunk.  He had no shirt on and it looked like he had been on the losing end of a bar fight.  This disgusted him.  He picked up his cell phone to call one of the elders at the church and suggest that they needed another committee to look into putting public pressure on the bars and other businesses that preyed on the weaker citizenry of Cincinnati.  As he drove by, his wheels splashed a puddle over the man laying in the curb.  Jack smiled at the provision of God to help sober the guy up.  He made another mental note for his sermon: 

“God rains upon the just and the unjust alike.  Hmmmm. . .the just get to use the water for their landscaping and gardens, the unjust get the bath they deserve?  Nah, that is too sarcastic. . .”

The phone chirped interrupting his thoughts as he flipped the lever to signal his turn to get onto the I-75 North on-ramp.  The elder had picked up his end of the line.  He reached over and clicked the hands-free set.

“Listen, Mike, this is Jack.  I am headed back from the symposium.  It went very well.  I am glad I attended it.  Do you remember how you once said you wanted us to get serious about empowering the less fortunate people of Cincinnati?  I think the time has come for us to put a team together back at the church to look into this and. . .”  He drove on discussing with the elder their strategy for energizing their church's social justice endeavors.

The man in the gutter woke from his slumber as the water splashed over him from a passing car.  He looked around and tried to remember what happened to him as he pulled himself up onto the sidewalk.  He leaned on the lamppost and for the first time realized he was shirtless.  In a daze he looked around for the shirt that must have been ripped from his back when the four teenagers had pulled him through the window as they carjacked him.  He fumbled in his jeans pocket, but realized his cell phone was still in the car that had been stolen.  So was his wallet. Dejected, he slid down along the lamppost, not caring that we was sitting in a puddle on the sidewalk.

Stewart, the executive director of the National Sojourners of Social Justice was leaving the same meeting Jack had been at.  He barely noticed the neighborhood he was driving through, instead focusing on navigating his way back to I-75 south to the airport to catch his flight to Baltimore where he would be speaking before a large collaborative of traditional denominational churches on the need for a call from the pulpit to make social justice a renewed mission of the American church.  He barely saw the closed business and the run down houses on the street as he listened intently to the NPR story about a new book coming out about Desmond Tutu on the radio of the rental car.  He still fumed that they had given him an ordinary sedan rather than hybrid car he had requested. He looked down at the green rubber bracelet on his wrist and smiled at his oath to his daughter to be more green this week as part of their sixth grade environmental awareness project. 

Suddenly he had a brilliant idea.  The NPR story that followed the Desmond Tutu book review was about congress and the president being at yet another standstill over the federal budget.  His organization had been trying to think of a way to get involved in this fight and the green rubber bracelet gave him a wonderful idea.  They could make a multicolored wristband that looked like a rainbow and they could do a parody of the “What Would Jesus Do” bracelets that once were all the rage.  Instead, this social justice bracelet would say:  “What Would Jesus Cut?”  They could sell them on their website for ten dollars each and use the proceeds to pay for an extra lobbyist over the next month to make sure the voice of the poor and disenfranchised had a voice in these very grave deliberations.  He picked up the phone to dial Marcy, his marketing director, when his head turned at the loud music coming from the bar on the corner.  He looked over and saw a man wearing an Army jacket huddled under an old rusty awning on the side of the bar smoking a cigarette. He shook his head realizing the city smoking ban he had fought for last year had not gone far enough.  Now smokers congregated in large huddles puffing mustard gas out from the cancer sticks they pinched in their dirty fingers on the sidewalks in front of bars.  Distracted, he put the phone down not sure which cause he should take up first.

At the next light a shirtless man seemed to be approaching him from the corner.  He couldn’t tell, but it looked like he was motioning towards him.  Probably another homeless person left with no choice but to ask for charity via offering to wash his windshield while he waited at the traffic light, most likely with spit and dirty rags.  Stewart decided to forgo the sales pitch or the window cleaning service, believing it demeaning to participate in such a despicable capitalistic transaction and reached out and offered the man a five dollar bill and card to the local food pantry his church sponsored in that part of town.  He did not listen to the man as he asked to use his phone, instead he smiled, toggled the electric window motor and drove through the light and got on the highway on-ramp that led to the airport.

The shirtless man looked down at his hand and realized he had not been given a phone to use to call 911.  It was a slick looking black vinyl card with a map that showed directions and the hour of operations for a local emergency pantry and community center.  Wrapped around the card with a rubber band was a five-dollar bill.  He waved after the man, but the window went up, the light turned green, and the black sedan flew onto the highway.

He didn’t need five bucks. He needed a phone.  “A phone a phone, a kingdom for a phone,” he whispered to himself wryly, trying to lift his spirits.  Just then he felt a hand on his shoulder. 

“Hey man, are you okay?”

“Not really.”

“I didn’t think so.  Say what’s with the Shakespeare?  Your not from around here are you?”

“No.”

“Well, my name is Sam. Uhhm welcome to the neighborhood?” Sam shook the hand of the injured man and gave him a sheepish smile and pulled off his field jacket and put it around the man’s naked shoulders.

“That’s my bar.  It’s right over on the corner.  In fact, lets get you back there and get you cleaned up.  I bet you could use a warm meal and,” he hooked his thumb first at the bar behind them and then at his beaten and shirtless body, “you probably could use a new shirt.  I don’t think you are my size, but I have a box full of softball crew shirts and I am sure we will have a size that fits you if you don’t mind wearing a shirt that says Sam’s Bar and Grill?”

The shirtless man laughed.  “If it is warm and clean, I’ll take it.”

“Do you need to go to the hospital?  Should I call the cops for you?”  Sam reached into his pocket for his phone and handed it to the man as he helped him across the street into the bar.  It was quiet now as the band took a break from playing.  Sam shook his head and looked at the poor man he was helping.  “I love owning this bar and following in my Dad’s footsteps, but boy this new band I hired is loud.  Heck, I wouldn’t have even noticed you if I hadn’t stepped out to grab a smoke and get a break form the noise.  I really need to quit smoking.  You would think with the new smoking ban I would quit after standing out in the rain just to get my fix, but nope I still puff away.  Of course, I am glad I stepped out for some nicotine tonight, or I wouldn’t have seen you when I did.”

"There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow,” the shirtless man fixed him with a weary smile.”

“Hamlet, right?”

The man nodded and smiled as Sam helped him to a chair inside his bar.  He called out to the woman behind the bar, “Lilly, run and grab my kit, please babe.”

“Oh my gawd!  Is he all right?”  

"I think so, but lets get his wounds dressed just the same and yell to Mike to get me that box of softball jerseys in the back.  Once we get his injuries cleaned up we can give him a shirt to wear."  

Sam looked down at the shirtless man, his eyes doing mental triage.  “Listen, uhh, we should probably call 911 and everything, but I used to be a medic in the Army.  Do you mind if I go ahead and administer some first aid?”

The man nodded, relief in his eyes.

Sam went to work with amazing speed and skill.  The shirtless man commented on that and Sam winked at him and told him about some of his experiences in the streets of Falluja as he dressed his wounds.  He let the man use his phone and go through the box of softball clothes as he excused himself to the kitchen. 

Sam cam back a few minutes later with an incredible black bean and chicken burrito.  For the first time the once shirtless man realized how hungry he was and gulped down the scrumptious white log and all of the salsa and chips as he waited for the police to arrive and take his statement.

Once the police were through, Sam called the man a cab and waited with him for the ride.  They chatted over a beer.  He gave the man a few more bandages and ointments from his kit.  “Listen, I still think you should check in at a hospital, especially for that ugly contusion on your forehead.  Your eye is open now, but you may have a concussion and need to let a doctor look at it—all I did is patch you up.”

“The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.”

“That one was from Merchant of Venice, right?”

“Sam, you are truly a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you for your kindness.  I have to say though, you are the strangest bartender I have ever met.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It was my new friend.”

“Well, if you think I am strange now, come back and join us this Sunday morning.  We transform this whole place into a church.  Bible study and worship at eleven, fish and loaves at noon.  Well, my kickin’ Grouper Reuben sandwich anyway.”

“Now that is a church I might be interested in.”

Sam reached for a napkin from the bar and jotted some info down.  We don’t really have an outreach card or anything fancy like that, but here are the facts.”

“Thank you for all your help.”

“Don’t mention it.  Come to think of it, thank you.”

The no longer shirtless man looked puzzled.

Sam smiled at him.  “That Shakespeare quote about mercy.  Doesn’t Portia go on to say something about the exchange of mercy being twice blessed?  The one who receives it, but also the one that gives it?”

The man smiled back up at Sam.

The cab arrived and Sam paid the fair forward including a healthy tip.  He gave the cabbie an extra twenty bucks above that and told him to stop and get anything the man might need on the way back home.

“See you at church this Sunday?” Sam winked as he made a play gesture at his grand surroundings.

“You just might, Sam.  Of course in my mind, we just did church.”

Sam slapped him ever so gently on the back and helped him into the cab and watched, praying softly as the cab drove off.  Then he smiled, lit up a cigarette and listened to the band start the second set—from outside the bar.  Maybe next week he would talk to Mike and the boys and find out if they knew that amp had a volume dial on it.