"BUT NOW..."

I mentioned in a previous posting that many of the girls of my Springfield Friends youth group were heavily into the movie Grease.  This may or may not have been because it is also one of Marilyn's favorites, but in any case, they knew most of the songs by heart.  I remind you of this so you can appreciate the following fiasco...

Late one afternoon a group of us took a boat from the Disney/MGM Studios over to Disney's Beach Club Resort so that we could eat at The Beaches and Cream Soda Shoppe (the sign above is newer- it used to be a Shoppe!).  Beaches (as Marilyn and I still refer to it) is famous for hamburgers, hot dogs and ice cream.  The setting is much like a 1950's soda shop, and it has a juke box.  We have eaten there literally 50 times or more, so forgive me if I don't remember whether we ate dinner that afternoon or just had dessert.   But I know we had dessert!  Beaches has lots of special sundaes (all of which are gigantic), the best root beer floats anywhere, great milk shakes and malts, and of course, the Kitchen Sink (see photo above).  The Kitchen Sink has nine scoops of ice cream, every topping known to man, and every thing else they ever put in a sundae.  Plus, as you can see, it is served in a little sink.  A group of us ordered one and tried our best to eat it that evening.  We failed, but we sure had fun trying!  Beaches is just an amazing place to eat ice cream.

But that's not the story I am here to tell you.  The juke box at Beaches is free, and at some point some of the girls (I am betting Mandy, Beth, Jill, Holly, Erin and Woodhead had something to do with this) went over and played some songs.  Among the selections was Hopelessly Devoted to You from Grease.  As the song began to play, I could see several of our girls mouthing the words and "acting out" the hopeless devotion being expressed in the song.  The singing grew audible as the verse approached the chorus, and when the lyric reached the intro to the chorus, the girls all sang at the top of their lungs..."BUT NOW..."  This, needless to say, startled the other patrons and the servers in the restaurant.   But as the girls kept singing, smiles spread to the faces of the employees and the customers alike, and others began to sing along with them.  It was one of those special moments that could never be planned or repeated, but one I will never forget.

The gospel of Jesus is not always spread through preaching, scripture reading or other "religious" acts.  Sometimes, in moments of spontaneous joy, we share the light of Christ through lifting the spirits of those we encounter.  After the song I got a chance to share who we were (a church group) with some of the employees and customers.  They were all moved by this group of students bound together in Christ's love.  We shared Jesus that day-  by singing along with Olivia Newton John.  Who would have guessed? 

Because of Jesus,