Best Western Bronco Inn, Ritzville Washington

I was in the breakfast area of a hotel preparing an English muffin, fully intending to accompany it with a cup of decaf, when I heard music.

I also heard someone reading the Bible.

That was not what I expected to hear at a hotel breakfast, especially before coffee.

I was surprised—and pleased. As a Christ-follower, I like it when someone is willing to take their relationship with God public. I assumed someone was playing a recording through the hotel speaker system, sending Scripture throughout the breakfast area.

The attendant came out of the back room. We caught each other’s eye, and she said good morning. I returned the greeting and then asked, “So, who’s playing the Bible?”

She looked confused.

“What do you mean?”

“The Bible,” I said again, pointing toward the speaker above my head. “Who’s playing it?”

She said she didn’t know and began apologizing for what we were hearing.

I assured her I was not requesting any action. I certainly wasn’t looking for an apology.

Another woman eating breakfast said she liked it.

“I do, too,” I said.

The attendant kept looking toward the speaker and then around the room, trying to locate the source. Finally, she pointed at me.

“I think it’s coming from you.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

She was right.

The Bible had been playing from my phone the entire time. I had listened to it during my drive the day before, and somehow it had started playing again. I do not know how. Apparently, my phone had decided to take my relationship with God public without consulting me.

The hotel was not broadcasting the Bible.

I was.

Her words reminded me of something a man named Grant had said a few weeks earlier.

I pick up grapes from two vineyards in the Prosser, Washington, area a few times a week. Grant owns one of them. We have had only a few interactions, but he has always struck me as a genuinely nice man.

Grant knows I travel from Montana and that I am in his area frequently to collect grapes. Once, he asked, “Do you ever sleep?”

I laughed and implied, not much. The laughter probably answered his question more honestly than words would have.

A few weeks ago, I sent Grant something I had written about rest (link here). When I saw him the following week, he told me he had read it and enjoyed it. He said he could tell I was a religious person. He wasn’t sure whether I was a Christian or a Mormon, but there was something about me he liked.

“You can just tell,” he said.

The breakfast attendant had identified something coming from my pocket. Grant had noticed something coming from my life.

Most of what we broadcast does not come through a speaker. It comes through our words, our expressions, our responses, and the way we treat people who can do nothing for us. It can be heard in what receives our attention, what tests our patience, what makes us generous, and what happens when we are interrupted.

People often receive these signals before we realize we are sending them.

I was grateful for what Grant said. I am also aware that what comes from me is not always something I would choose to turn up. There are parts of me I would prefer others not hear. A hurried response can become a broadcast. So can impatience, fear, resentment, or the need to be right.

Jesus said the mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart. I have usually thought of that as a warning about words. Now I wonder whether much of our living is overflow.

What we repeatedly listen to, rehearse, love, fear, and practice begins to make a home within us. Over time, it comes through—not as proof of our virtue, but as evidence of our formation.

The attendant was trying to solve a small acoustic mystery, but she left me with a question much larger than the sound coming from my pocket:

What is coming from me?

Sooner or later, what we carry within us finds a way to be heard—often before we realize we are broadcasting.

Until next time,

George

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