Articles
Scenes at Starbucks
My wife and I are not coffee drinkers, so we don’t get into Starbucks very often. But one visit a couple of years ago made a distinct impression on me. Our first granddaughter had just been born, and on our way to the hospital we stopped at Starbucks to grab some coffee for our son.
The thing that struck me was what we saw when we first got out of the car. Parked in front of the store were a bicycle and push cart that belonged to a pair of homeless people. Parked in a space just a few feet away was a $200,000 Lamborghini.
A few thoughts on the scene:
#1: All kinds of people like coffee, and the folks at the Starbucks on Tamiami Trail in Sarasota are ready to welcome all kinds of customers. I was glad no one behind the counter said to me, “Hey you, driving the Ford…Yeah, we don’t serve your kind in here.”
James warns:
My brethren, do not hold your faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ with an attitude of personal favoritism. For if a man comes into your assembly with a gold ring and dressed in fine clothes, and there also comes in a poor man in dirty clothes and you pay special attention to the one who is wearing the fine clothes, and say, “You sit here in a good place,” and you say to the poor man, “You stand over there, or sit down by my footstool,” have you not made distinctions among yourselves, and become judges with evil motives? (James 2:2-4).
#2: Rich is in the eye of the beholder. Am I rich? Compared to the fellow driving the exotic sports car, no. Compared to the fellow with all his earthly possessions in a little cart, yes. I daresay that’s true for most of us in this country. We may not feel rich, but we are. And we have a responsibility to use the riches we possess to glorify God.
Paul writes:
Instruct those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited or to fix their hope on the uncertainty of riches, but on God, who richly supplies us with all things to enjoy. Instruct them to do good, to be rich in good works, to be generous and ready to share, storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of that which is life indeed (1 Timothy 6:17-19).
#3: Do you picture the owners of those very different sets of wheels sipping coffee together and chatting at the same table? Neither do I. (I didn’t look around carefully enough to confirm or deny it.) In our culture, as in most times and places, the wealthy and the poor don’t interact very much on a personal level.
In Luke 16, Jesus told a story contrasting a rich man living in splendor and a poor man named Lazarus who was laid at the gate of his house. While the focus is on their different fates after death, the story implies that, in life, the rich man paid no heed to Lazarus’ impoverished condition. What about us? In our day-to-day comings and goings, do we have eyes to see the needs of those around us? Do we act, even in small ways, to help? Or do we train ourselves instead to look past them, as the rich man did Lazarus? “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and will be repaid in full” (Proverbs 19:17, NRSV).
