Reflecting on the difficulties of sharing her faith, Rachel Held Evans shares a cringe-inducing anecdote about a chapel speaker she heard while a student at a Christian college:
Mark suggested we begin a conversation with our seatmate by asking if they knew where they would go spend eternity should there be a catastrophic failure in the plane’s hydraulic system and we all went down in flames. If that doesn’t work, he said, we should drill the person on how many of the Ten Commandments they might have broken, revealing their need for a savior—Ever committed adultery? Ever lied? Ever disobeyed your parents? Ever coveted your neighbor’s things? You know, make a little small talk about idolatry and death and then tell them about Jesus.
She closes the piece by noting a different conversation she recently had on a plane, where she merely listened to and encouraged a woman whose husband was suffering from dementia:
The woman on the plane planted a good seed in my heart, and I hope I planted a good seed in hers. We might not get to watch as the God of rain and soil and sun makes those seeds grow, but we can trust that God is faithful, that God can take even our clumsiest attempts at witnessing and turn them into something good.
The Dish 