Soup's On
Posted by Ryan Woods
I got to experience a cool thing today at work. A dude and his wife came in and sat in my section. I try to say something different to every single table. I don't know why, it just makes the night more exciting for me. At this particular table I forgot to introduce myself. So quickly the guy interrupted me and asked my name. He then proceeded to introduce himself and his wife and then shake my hand. It was done very friendly like and not in a creepy overbearing way. It was cool.
They were very talkative and interesting. He's a computer engineer who on the side is developing a game for the xbox 360. Pretty cool I thought. There whole family plays the Wii together, including the wife and four year old. Pretty cool I thought.
I got the feeling like they were Christians. Sometimes I get this feeling with my tables. Sometimes they get this feeling from me. Is that weird? I don't think it should be.
A few minutes later they began whispering to me. This doesn't happen often at a restaurant. They quietly asked if they could buy one of my other tables dinners for them. Secretly. For no reason. I said sure and they said thanks.
When the woman and her daughter asked for their bill I nonchalantly told them that they could leave, someone wanted to pay their bill for them. They were shocked. They didn't believe me. They even tried to argue with me, but I just told them that they couldn't pay for dinner and that if they truly wanted to buy dinner with that money they'd need to find a homeless person or something. They were truly grateful and left me a much larger tip than was necessary (they even called back later that night to give me a compliment...odd, 'cause I wasn't the reason they had a good night)
This has happened before. It's not horribly rare at our restaurant. But it almost always comes with a catch. It's usually that they are Christians and in the end ask to pray for you, or invite you to church, or something like that. It's a cool thing. I don't think it's manipulative, I think it's putting your money where your mouth is. I was expecting a gospel message, but it never came. I even told them about living in Portugal and working with a church, and they still did not give the invitation I expected. I thought about asking if they were Christ followers, but in the end I decided against it. I decided against it not because I was embarrassed to ask. No, I ask lots of stupid questions. Rather I realized that it didn't matter. It didn't matter because whether they were followers of Jesus or not, what they did honored God. It was a simple and beautiful act of worship. No strings attached. They may not have known the God to which they gave honor, but all good and perfect things come from above. God is the source of goodness.
Have you ever been on the giving or receiving end of an exchange like this?
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