there is a lady standing in front of me at Starbucks. she doesnt know me. she’s never seen me. she turns around and smiles, “How ya doin?” I shift my weight from one foot to the other. “Oh, geesh” I think to myself “Am I being targeted for a sale? Does she want something?” “I’m good” comes my reply. “Yah?” She laughs…”Glad to hear it!” She turns, orders her grande something or other and away she goes to the other end of the counter. That’s it! For real. She says nothing else and out the door she disappears into the melting chaos that is our lives.
I have to sit and think about this. Who does this? Who wants to know? And why? It’s the life we know…don’t bug me…I won’t bug you kind of world. Shuffle along. Occasionally smile. March to the Beat. Set your expectations low…you will need it to survive.
It makes me think about people. The very essence of life.
We breathe. We move. We laugh. We love. We dream. We cry. We yell. We struggle. We hope. We try. We let live. We let die. We are people. We are not some sub-human species looking in on planet earth to see how the creatures interact. WE ARE THE CREATURES…designed by something bigger than ourselves…the Creator.
I have been reading a book by Donald Miller called Searching for God Knows What…In his book, Miller is so real about his desire for human interaction and how he somehow wonders if the Christians are missing it (he is a Christian, mind you). Are we people interacting with RULES instead of RELATIONSHIPS with people? Jesus died on a cross (imagine a splinter). He was flesh and He died on a cross to save us while we were yet sinners. He had no rules in his head about how he could separate the good from the bad. His M.O. was love. His pain was for LOVE. He never sidestepped that the entire time he walked this planet. He spoke so plainly about it that people felt the need to complicate it. Surely, he meant more…surely he meant there needed to be something else to keep people in line…surely He would want us to whip fellow humans into shape.
Honestly?
He loved the woman at the well. He loved the blind man who said, “I want to see”. He loved the tax collector who cheated people. He loved the prostitute. He loved Peter who denied him. He loved. And He kept loving. And kept loving PEOPLE….he backed up what he said…not with a checklist showing everything Christian-ese he had accomplished but instead as a servant. He brought relief to people not condemnation. He truly saved them by serving them.
As I sit with my pumpkin spice latte, taking in the patrons of the coffee world…I wonder now, what does this look like in the 21st century? Why do I discriminate a person’s intentions? their motive? What if today…that greeting saved me? What if today that lady in line gave me hope? What if today I could be that hope? And so I throw away my bio-degradable cup into the trashcan and smile knowingly at a young girl writing her philosophy paper, “hi, how ya doin?”
