19/04/2026
I met Oprah and made it weird. I know. This stuff always happens to me.
I grew up in a no-feelings house, which means we all had massive feelings that nobody talked about. It was the 1980s. A different time. My children would very much like this approach to emotional life. They tell me this regularly, often while we are in the middle of a feelings circle.
Oprah was the first person I ever saw speak about her feelings like they mattered. Like they were allowed to take up space. I was about twelve years old, and I drank it like someone who didn't know they were dying of thirst.
So when I heard she was coming here, I had to be there. Front row ticket. Photo op. More money than I want to admit. No regrets.
But during the show, something stopped me. Oprah was talking about gratitude, which I love, and then she said, almost in passing, "How I prayed to all the Apostles at that moment."
I had a Holy Spirit mic drop moment.
Because suddenly I understood: it was never about Oprah's feelings. It was always about God.
There's this moment after Jesus died, not dead at all as it turned out, where two of his followers are walking along the road talking to a random stranger. They tell him everything about Jesus, the dying, the now-not-being-dead. He walks with them and talks them through all the times in the Old Stories where this moment was written in advance. They get to town for the night and invite the stranger for dinner. And that's when it happens: they recognise him when he breaks the bread.
The random stranger was Jesus the whole time.
I know how they felt.
And standing there in that arena, with all those women and all that gratitude, it hit me: she was the first preacher I ever heard. The water I had been so desperate for wasn't really about feelings at all.
It was always about Jesus.
She pointed me toward something she may not have even known she was pointing to.
Here's where I made it weird: by the time I got to the photo op, I didn't really want to meet her anymore.
Not because anything had gone wrong, but because in the space of about twenty minutes, the Holy Spirit had shown me something I couldn't unsee. Oprah had discipled me. Unknowingly. Maybe unwittingly. Over fifteen years before I became a disciple myself.
It just took me a front-row seat and a photo op to finally hear it. I didn't need to meet Oprah because I have met Jesus.
I think maybe we all have an Oprah. Someone who pointed us toward God without knowing that's what they were doing. That person you’re thinking of right now… yeah, that’s them.
Bless you,
Rev Jessie
PS: If this landed for you, would you share it to your story? We're trying to get these messages in front of more people and you sharing is genuinely the best way that happens. I know. Vulnerable. But that's how these conversations find the people who need them.
