At Beyond’s Coffee Shop Sunday in Stellenbosch, Pastor Jay explored how greed, envy and pride can keep the grace we’ve received from reaching the people around us.
“Can I come back?”
Pastor Jay had recognised the young woman at an event the previous evening. She had once helped lead her and sensed she wanted to say something. When the question finally came, it was as much about belonging as it was about returning. Was there still a place for her?
By the time Pastor Jay told the story at Coffee Shop Sunday Stellies, the question had become one for the room. What does someone encounter when they come to us hoping for the kind of welcome Jesus has given us?
At Beyond’s morning service, Pastor Jay had spoken about how trusting God with tomorrow frees us to be generous today. She asked how we might recognise God’s grace at work in our lives by looking at what others receive because of us. At Coffee Shop Sunday Stellies, she took that question further. We pray for increase, opportunity and restored relationships. Have we grown in our capacity to steward what we’re asking for? Grace invites us to depend on God and obey Him with what He has already placed in our hands.
WHEN ENOUGH STILL FEELS UNSAFE
Pastor Jay returned to the rich man in Luke 12:13–21. When the man’s land produces more than his barns can hold, he decides to build bigger ones. The harvest gives him something he thinks he can count on for years. He has plans for every bit of it, and those plans leave his neighbour and God out of the picture.
Someone who remembers unpaid bills, uncertainty about the next meal or the strain of asking for help may still feel that fear years later. A new job or a growing business can change our circumstances long before it changes our sense of safety. Giving something away can feel like risking a return to the very season we prayed to get through.
Pastor Jay affirmed the wisdom of saving, planning and providing for a family. She also asked what happens when we need to feel completely secure before we can respond to someone else’s need. We could spend years waiting to do what God is asking of us today.
The God who sustained us when we had little is still faithful when we have more.
She had faced that question herself during the week. Requests for help with a car problem and a child’s medical care came while her family was carrying responsibilities of its own. She helped in both cases without expecting repayment. The message she was preparing had already become something she needed to practise.
Has our capacity to give grown alongside our capacity to earn?
WHEN SOMEONE ELSE’S JOY BECOMES OUR GRIEVANCE
Fear can make us guard what we have. Envy draws our attention to what others have. A friend’s marriage flourishes, their business grows or their child reaches a milestone. Their good news can leave us wondering why our own lives look so different.
Pastor Jay spoke about her son’s birth at the start of the COVID-19 lockdown. She recalled frightening medical news, uncertainty about his future and a season in which her faith felt shaken. As friends welcomed babies of their own, she wrestled with why her child’s journey looked different.
At a later cardiology appointment, she said, the holes previously identified in her son’s heart could no longer be found. Looking back, she spoke about how that season exposed what she felt she was owed, where she thought she needed more and how easily she compared her family’s story with someone else’s.
She also described the child the community knows today. During one service, he went up to someone and began praying for him. The man later told Pastor Jay that it had come at a moment when he needed to know God saw him.
Someone else’s joy can be hard to celebrate when our own questions are still unanswered. Their blessing tells us nothing about whether God remembers us. As we recognise His grace in our own lives, we become freer to celebrate what He’s doing in theirs.
WHEN A GIFT BEGINS TO FEEL LIKE SOMETHING WE’RE OWED
Pride can be harder to recognise when it shows up in familiar expectations. We grow accustomed to the care we receive at home or the opportunities we have at work or church. Over time, we can forget the people who prayed for us, opened doors for us or made space for us to grow.
Pastor Jay asked how easily we can come to expect the benefits of belonging while leaving the responsibility of contributing to someone else. She brought it down to the ordinary work of noticing when a spouse is tired, sharing a responsibility or stepping in to help when nobody is watching.
Gratitude makes us pay attention again. We begin to see what others are carrying and ask what we can do to help.
THE WELCOME GRACE MAKES POSSIBLE
Towards the end of the evening, Pastor Jay turned to Matthew 18:21–35. A servant is released from a debt he could never repay. Soon afterwards, he refuses mercy to a fellow servant who owes him far less. The parable brings the evening’s questions into one encounter.
How will the mercy we’ve received shape the way we treat the person in front of us?
Then came the rest of the young woman’s story. Pastor Jay said Holy Spirit had prompted her to ask what question the young woman needed answered that night. The woman told her she had already prayed that God would send someone to ask her.
“Can I come back?”
Pastor Jay assured her she could. When she shared the question with someone else there, he drew the young woman into a hug.
That welcome gets to the heart of why Beyond gathers for Coffee Shop Sunday. We make room for people who might otherwise never walk into a church to encounter Jesus. And as Pastor Jay reminded the room, we can extend that same grace wherever we are. We can forgive because we’ve been forgiven, offer patience because we’ve been met with patience, and open a door because someone once opened one for us.
Who might find the courage to come back because we made room for them?
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