An earnest Christian woman once spoke up at a prayer meeting of the small Chicago church to which I once belonged.  She worked as a clerk in the university bookstore, and had done so for years.  As a lifelong church member -- indeed, as a lifelong Southern Baptist -- she was convinced that she ought to be speaking about the gospel to her workmates.  But she confessed at this meeting to her complete frustration.  She never had opportunity, she said, to speak a single word of spiritual truth to her fellow clerks, and she didn't know what to do.

After expressions of sympathy were offered by members of the group, somone finally asked her a direct and pertinent question:  "Lois, how many of the clerks would you say are friends of yours?"

Lois looked a bit stunned.  The conversation had taken an unexpected turn, a turn that seemed to strike her as irrelevant.  "Well, none of them...."

The questioner gently persisted.  "How often do you have your breaks with them, go for coffee or lunch with them?"

Again, Lois looked a bit blank.  "I always take my breaks by myself to have coffee and read my Bible.  And I usually take my lunch in the park across the street on my own."

The rest of the group then tried to help Lois see that with no friends or even cordial acquaintances among her workmates, she would literally have no natural opportunity to speak of spiritual things in the course of ringing in sales in a bookstore.  Furthermore, if she were to broach the subject, her surprised colleagues might... simply deflect her well-meant initiative as irrelevant, since it is unlikely that Lois would know any of them well enough to speak to a zone of genuine need in their lives.

Lois doubtless came across at the bookstore as a decent, responsible coworker.  And that consistent morality is not to be despised.  But without sharing more of her life with her workmates, her message simply would either never emerge, or would likely not emerge in a way that would be understood and received.