I didn’t set out to reach Alex. We just shared an office and got on with the work. But when you sit beside someone every day, you start to actually know them, and it turned out we had more in common than I expected. Those little patches of common ground became conversations, and the conversations kept going deeper.
Before long, the best part of my workday was the talking. We’d get onto the big questions without ever really planning to: what happens when we die, whether hell is what people say it is, the things I’d read in my Bible that morning. Alex would push back, I’d push back, and neither of us ever walked away offended. It was honest, and it was warm, and it was the most alive part of the nine to five.
It didn’t stay at work either. First they had me over for a meal. Then I invited Alex along to a social sport afternoon with some of the young people from church. Then to a service. He invited me to something at his church, and I went. None of it was a strategy. It was just a friendship that kept widening its circle.
The moment I still think about is my wedding. When my wife and I looked at who we wanted in the room on the most important day of our lives, Alex and his partner were on the list, and they came.
We’ve often said since that we think of them as pre-Adventists. We’re not claiming anything dramatic. But God has been quietly nudging them, and here’s the proof: they’re the ones asking the questions now. His wife stumbled onto the Sabbath in her own reading and wanted to understand it. They’ve asked what we make of things they’re wrestling through. The door is open, and it opened because I stopped seeing the desk next to mine as just a desk.
That’s the whole thing. Consistency, over years. Learning someone before you ever try to teach them. It cost me nothing but presence, and it’s still bearing fruit.
