Mark Shockley

Make Yourself at Home

    My sister works in a coffee shop.  On some days, I do too; it’s just that I don’t make any coffee.  Twice a week I meet a Korean student for tutoring in English as a second language.  I have no office for tutoring; propriety precludes meeting at my house; a restaurant would be too expensive and noisy; and if we met out of doors the wind and Texas weather would prove distracting.  But a coffeeshop has none of these difficulties.  It is the perfect place to meet a perfect stranger.

    It is a fine place to work, a fine place to study—individually, or with a friend—or a great place just to enjoy a book, or catch up with an old friend.  A coffee shop is a bastion of comfort and versatility.  It is the easiest place for a first date because of the freedom it provides.  It says, “black, latte, tea, or water—whatever you want.  Now, later… Come, leave… Just don’t make a mess and try not to laugh too loud.”  It is so versatile that you don’t even have to like coffee.
    In short, welcoming is the word for it.  I feel that my soul has something to glean from the atmosphere of a coffeeshop.  Can a stranger rest with me, work with me, and find all his most noble freedoms upheld, yet leave my presence with an inner fire blown hot to find and do the next thing God would ask, the thing or things for which those noble freedoms were given?

    The apostle Paul said that he had become “all things to all men,” not merely to make them comfortable, or to avoid offense, but to make sure that they were free to respond to the God inside him.  I have worked for a diplomat, and he has never failed to offer me water at his apartment.  An ambassador is careful, courteous and conscious of the country in which he lives, only to better serve and re-present the government and people of his homeland.  He walks like a servant into every locale, yet his requirements and his reward are elsewhere.

    Reflecting, it is no wonder to me that I have met missionaries and Christian workers that employ coffee shops and teahouses for outreach.  It is like the quintessential semi-informal meeting-place.  But it is not the coffee, nor the tea, but the gap that it fills in our society, that makes it pleasant.  May we also invite others into the den of fellowship in our hearts, so that in meeting us they might meet Jesus—Who said if anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our home with him.