Growing Daisies

Coffee shops are quiet the phenomenon.  They have essentially become the non-alcoholic watering hole of social activity.  It use to be a local bar like “Cheers” where everyone knew your drink and name.  You met up with friends, and you hung out for hours.  Coffee shops, in particularly Starbucks, has found a similar niche during the day.    Baristas are bartenders, locals become regulars, and a subculture is born. 
At the two Starbucks that Ive worked at there is the same “Cheers” community.  You have your morning crew on their way to work or school, the midday peeps getting that post lunch fix, and your night time crowd hanging with friends.  After working a mere nine months I am completely immersed in this ecclectic community.  Baristas and regulars from all different backgrounds, ages, cultures, and genders form a sort of pseudo-family. 
   I have found myself graciously accepted and apart of this family.  Connections have been made, friendships are growing, and I am constantly learning more and more of their stories.  Its been a nice surprising “benefit” of the job.  When I step back and reflect about it I realize two things about this subculture.  The first is the pressing reality that people are dying to be known.  Regardless of how they go about it or who they’re trying to be,  people long for relationships.  I see people linger for hours at work or come back multiple times a day just for that personal contact.  My coworkers crack jokes, and tell stories, but there is more behind it all.  There is an emptiness devoid of life and joy.  I totally identify with this in that I too long to be known, but I, who knows truth, struggle to not pull away from relationships.  As believers, our relational needs stare us in the face every day.  For the person who does not know Chirst it is an even lonelier world out there in the baren wasteland of our culture.   Most of my friends are ones with people I have met through church or some ministry.  My resource for deep relationships is plentiful and I am constantly around people who really know me. 
   The second thing I notice is that my coffee shop friends have had really negative perceptions of Christians.  I have many conversations about why Christians rip people off, or why people go around claiming to be Jesus, or just questions about God in general.  As believers, we should also not be surprised by this.  We all have, at some point in our walk, done many legalistic and counterproductive things “in the name of Jesus”.  The beauty of it, however, is that those negative encounters my coffee friends have had turn out to be great opportunities for dialogue and discussion.  It’s been amazing and a blessing to have conversations over some coffee and see God at work.  I get to be part of God showing them a different sort of Jesus than they have ever known, and they get to be Jesus to me in ways they yet to even comprehend.  
   I reflect on this now, because it is the summer.  The summer is the season of ministry and college students for me.  This is absolutely my favorite time of the year, but part of me laments having to pull away from my coffee community.  Im totally not the evangelist type, but I feel a sense of commitment to some people at work.  I am now at the point in the friendship where I could call some friends up, ask them to go hang out, and maybe have some deeper conversations with them.  God doesnt need me to be there, but He wants me to be there.  He is working continuously in ways I dont even know.