I shall never forget in my student days at Emory--not my seminary days, but after I'd served a parish for a time and went back for an advanced degree--I remember being one of the oldest people in the class. And there was another there who had also served in a parish for some time. He sat on the other side of the room from me. And we didn't relate too well, I suppose, to the younger students because we had our own agenda, our reasons for being there. We didn't have too much in common with the younger students.

I remember one day going over to see this man, who happened to be a black man (he was the only black person in the class). At the end of the class, I said to him, "How about having lunch today?"

He said, "Fine. Where do you want to go?"

I said, "Well, let's try the cafeteria."

We went to the cafeteria and enjoyed lunch and began to talk about our churches. He serves one of the largest, predominantly black Baptist churches in the country. We began to talk about our work. And out of that there grew a friendship, so that the rest of our time during our residency, we were together most of the time.

Toward the end of our residency, he invited me to go home with him one weekend to preach in his church. I gladly accepted the invitation. It was a great church. I was waiting my turn to get up to preach, and he said something in his introduction of me that choked me up so much I found it difficult to continue.

He said to the congregation, "I want you to know that I set a deadline on the day I met this man I told God that morning that if I didn't meet someone that day who said hello to me and wanted to spend some time with me, wanted to be my friend, then I was giving up my education. I was coming back home."

And I got all choked up, and I still do because what I had done was such a small gesture, nothing--"Let's have lunch together." And out of it I not only found one of the best friends I have, but God used that word, unknown to me, as a word of encouragement to him in a time of bleak despair. Isn't it amazing that God can let an imperfect person be an expression of his word of grace?