I spent several years of my undergraduate career tending bar at a place named “The Well Bar”. If I ever had a job that prepared me for pastoral ministry, it was this job. In fact, in a lot of ways, it was easier. I had a pulpit from which I stood behind, but it was a much broader thing and I could speak to people individually from that pulpit as well as corporately. I served alcohol, something that I still do on Sunday mornings here….although there was usually greater variety and quantity when I was just a barkeep. I talked about Jesus in both places, although I have to admit that at times my bar audience was a little more receptive to what I said about Him than my church audience. 
I still look back at the cast of characters from that bar with a fondness that most people probably reserve for the casts of their favorite television sit coms. There was Lonnie, the heartbreak kid who caught his wife sleeping with another man years back and never turned the corner since then. Shirley, who pined after Lonnie even though she knew she would never be able to exorcise the demons of his past, sat beside him dreaming of what it would be like. Billy and Johnny were the rough and tumble duo of guys who never got over the persona of their high school glory days, even though those days had long past. There was Frank, the middle management guy who hung out at the working class bar, feeling guilty about being “the boss” and trying to establish some camaraderie with the factory workers he oversaw as he tried to figure out his own divorce. And that’s just a few of the characters.
I have considered writing a collection of short stories about these folks. The Well Bar has been torn down and I think the statute of limitations is up for most of our legal infractions (although there was that one with homemade dynamite that might still get us on some Homeland Security watch list). Also, I know for a fact that a few of my regulars, my cast of characters, have now passed on to hopefully be with Jesus (I do have questions, unfortunately.)
One such person who has passed away is JD. JD drank a Bud Light bottle most of the time, and if there was a reason to celebrate (or if he had had a few too many Bud Lights) he would order “the fruit of the nectar,” which was Jaegermeister. If you’ve ever had Jaeger, you may define it more as the “distillation of cough syrup and black licorice” than “fruit of the nectar”, but hey, people like what they like. As an English major, simply hearing JD say “fruit of the nectar” was enough to drive me to want to drink, but JD tipped well and I got over my pet peeves. Besides, “fruit of the nectar” was a pretty memorable line.
We all have our JDs, our Lonnies, our Shirleys. We have our casts of characters. Some of them go to our bar and some of them go to our church. Whoever they are, they are people that God has brought into our lives. I think it was Emile Zola, the French writer, who once said that all he did was take characters and put them together as if in a laboratory, to see how they reacted with one another, and out popped a work of art. I think that is what God does with us. I think He brings us together in the laboratories of our homes, our neighborhoods, our schools, our churches, and even our bars, to see how we react with one another. I believe He does that sending Jesus into our lives via the Holy Spirit to see how we react with Him, and as a result, we find something that is sweeter than even the “fruit of the nectar”.
p.s. The names of the sinners in the story above have been changed, the innocent need no such protections.