You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.  -Matthew 5:14-16

     Ugh!  I knew, just knew, she was going to sit down next to me!

     It happens every time!  I'm utterly convinced that God and the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority want to be absolutely certain that I can never stretch out and be comfortable on the 3:15 train out of Boston.  I'm not kidding, ninety-year old arthritis sufferers suddenly have the speed and agility of Olympic hurdlers when trying to catch a train where there's a risk I might sit by myself.

     If you ride a commuter train, you know how it works. Two seats on one side of the aisle; three seats on the other.  As an early bird, you race to grab the window seat of the three-seater and then pray/plead/beg or promise God you'll be a preacher if He'll just let you have this one ride with nobody in the middle seat next to you.  As the train fills up, you study the buttons on your suit coat intently, knowing that any eye contact signals to others that you're halfway human and that you won't sigh/growl/bite if they sit in that middle seat.  But as the departure time gets closer and it looks like you've made it, you can't resist looking up to see if the passengers are all seated.  You know better than to look.  I even think there's someplace in Proverbs that says "a wiseth man or woman nevereth looketh uppeth until the train has moveth sixty yards."  Still, you can't help it, you peek.

     Zap!  One last rider stands in the aisle and smiles as she makes eye contact with you. 

     That's what happened to me on this particular day, though I'd still swear I saw a smirk on the conductor's face as the last rider sat next to me that day.

     Long story short, she wasn't just a rider but a talker, and I'm pretty sure I could write her biography now, but here's the only part that matters to today's devotion: She absolutely, positively was NOT a Christian, and was very surprised to discover that a "reasonably intelligent fellow like me" believed in "that Jesus stuff."

     So I asked her the question I ask every worker who tells me they aren't a Christian:  If you could tell me five things you wish were true about your Christian coworkers, what would they be?  I've been asking that question now for five years, with results I find moving, enlightening, and (depending on the person answering) even poignant.  (That question has also given me more opportunities to share my faith in Christ than I could ever have imagined.)

     So, after wading through her dissertation on all the things Christians do wrong, believe wrong and say wrong, (which almost always involves the caricatures modern media likes to project about Christians) she finally settled down to answer the question.  She was five for five, hitting every single one of the "top five" observations that have emerged in the five years I've posed the question.  For what it's worth in your life and mine as ambassadors for Jesus (II Corinthians 5:20), here's what she (and most everyone else) said:

"I wish my Christian coworkers.

 ...knew more about their faith; why they believe what they believe." 

...had more hope in hard times."

...were more curious about the hard questions of life, so that when asked those questions, they would already have answers."

...behaved more honorably."

...were more compassionate." 

     I wish I was-we were-those things, too.

--Randy Kilgore