It was a quiet Wednesday morning when my friend and I left at 6:30 to go pick up a third friend from the airport. After picking her up, we’d have a couple of hours to kill before picking up two more people and taking them to the house where they’d stay for the week. Being the coffee lovers that we are, we decided it would be fun to find a coffee shop and try to finish waking ourselves up during that time. So as we neared the airport, I pulled out the trusty GPS and started searching for something close by. Of course there were the usual Starbucks entries … but we wanted something different, something interesting, something not quite so normal.
It was this desire for the extraordinary that led us into the downtown area, with the flow of a somewhat heavy stream of morning rush-hour traffic. We exited when the GPS told us to, and faithfully followed the directions through a maze of Firsts and Deens and all manner of other downtown-ish street names. We spotted our coffee shop … tucked back into a back street in a warehouse with some other not-so-pleasant looking shops. We didn’t even stop the car. At this point the ever faithful GPS was giving us a few helpful options: Make a legal u-turn at the first opportunity, or go six tenths of a mile to the nearest Starbucks. We opted for familiarity this time and headed for Starbucks. However, this too turned out to be less than desirable as we found ourselves on a main street in the downtown area, with nowhere to park, and now really no desire to. And it was at this point, that we decided to go back towards the airport, and hopefully find our coffee elsewhere.
We did. At McDonald’s. Where I’m pretty sure (at least in my iced coffee) that they forgot the coffee and just gave me cream and sugar over ice.
On our way back to the airport, we laughed and chalked it up to “It’s not about the place, but about the people.” The time we spent together during that little excursion was fun, we laughed, we got caught up on each other’s lives, and just had an enjoyable time. And eventually (after dropping our airport passengers off at their house for the week), we did get our coffee … from Starbucks.
As I reflected back on this little incident, a thought struck me: So often in our daily lives, we’re on a quest for the extraordinary, the exciting, the adventurous. And so often, that’s not what God calls us to. It is often the ordinary, the mundane, the tedious, or the familiar that we are called upon to partake of and from which to learn. It is the ordinary things that often teach us the extraordinary lessons. Yes, it’s great to experience the extraordinary, the exciting, the thrilling. But it’s also exciting to realize that God is using the ordinary to teach us, to lead us, to grow us, and to change us into the likeness of His Son. I think far too often in our search for the extraordinary, we reject the quest for the ordinary things in life. And what a shame, because it’s in the ordinary things that we are afforded some of the greatest lessons. If we can live in the ordinary and have joy, if we can find peace in being still instead of moving on, if we can serve others in an ordinary way, then I think we have learned what it means to be content … to love others unconditionally … to truly live.
And thus, my philosophizing over coffee comes to a close. I love it when God uses little things like that remind me of great truths. Even if it does mean “settling” for coffee from Starbucks.
