When Worship Just Happens

Sunday evening, after the youth Bible study concluded, we were all walking out to our cars when a car I didn’t recognize pulled onto the lot, backing up to the salt store next door. I decided to just wait a couple of minutes, let the driver get his salt and then follow him off of the lot, locking the drive-through gate behind him.

Instead, as the driver got out of his car, he walked straight toward me, asking as he walked, “Are you the pastor here?” I barely finished telling him my name when he asked, “I was wondering if I could ask you to pray for me?” Just a couple of days before, he’d been involved in a terrible car crash. The wreck was the other driver’s fault and he had died instantly. The total stranger standing before me was still visibly shaken at having seen it all, so much so that he was willing to ask a total stranger to pray for him.

Earlier that day, I’d left church feeling a little frustrated. Among other things, like asking people to “bow their eyes and close their heads” during the invitation, instead of the other way around, I had also forgotten to take my Bible to worship. I intended to read the gospel as part of my message but instead found myself standing there asking if I could borrow someone else’s Bible. Worship had not gone like I planned.

Praying with a total stranger wasn’t exactly how I planned to end the day, either. Yet, praying with that man turned out to be one of the most meaningful experiences of worship I had all day.

There is worship that we plan and there is worship that just happens. I’m so glad things don’t always turn out the way I plan them.