Of Five Dollar Bills and Tasty Meals

I stand amazed at a disturbing trend overtaking my homeland. A trend I willingly and lustfully partake in, daily.

Yesterday I spent the morning at Starbucks, a glorious place filled with delightful beverages wielding the power to turn your frazzled morning into a spiritual experience. The creators of Starbucks, whomever they are, were not a single IQ point away from being declared sheer geniuses. After all, who can, upon entering these franchises with the best of intentions of frugality, resist the titillating aromas of freshly roasted, brewing coffee wafting throughout the classic coffee shop décor, offering both peace and tranquility at no small price, to the formerly monetary minded patron? As if this scene were not enough to entice one to all-together turn over one’s wallet in exchange for a Venti cup of a six-worded beverage, the unquestioning perkiness of the Baristas surely does the trick. There is not a coffee purchaser yet who has left anything short of a friend to a Barista… Yes, Starbucks is a delightful place.

But, after several minutes of sitting and sipping my five dollar beverage of delight yesterday morning, and fully basking in all that Starbucks has come to offer me, it hit me: how many children in the world will not know what their next meal tastes like because I chose to spend my excess on my own luxury rather than on meeting the immediate needs of those most desperate for it?

Reading a book, “Radical,” by David Platt, I received my answer all too soon: five children to be exact. According to the statistics found in Platt’s book, over one billion people a day live on a measly dollar a day, and two billion more live on only two dollars a day (108). What a sobering truth.

When I stop to consider how well I know the Starbucks menu by heart, I can no longer help but imagine the desperate, helpless faces of those men, women, and children unable to survive on a dollar a day… not because they were not good stewards of the meager amount available to them, rationing and portioning, sharing amongst their shrinking families. But, due only to my own selfishness and ignorance, have shirked my responsibilities to godly stewardship.

Second Corinthians 9:8 speaks so clearly of this concept, “And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.” God has not lavished his grace upon us in order that we might solely bask in the abundance that he blesses us with. That concept makes us the object of worship! What a dangerous concept for us to find ourselves embracing!

No, he has lavished us with such grace that we may turn around and lavish others with that same grace in the generous supply he has abounded to us in our own lives.

I find my heart questioning the significance of the luxury that Starbucks has come to represent in this article in my own life, not because Starbucks is in and of itself a wretched place of debauchery, but because somewhere there is a little girl crying out for a meal that I have the funds to provide. Will I really choose to live a lifestyle that is characterized by a five-dollar-beverage addiction when I have been given the grace to abound five-days of sustenance for her? Five more days of a chance for her to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ? Oh, how my prayer is that I won’t! …that we won’t.