I was at Starbucks the other day, working on my sermons for this weekend.
Behind me was this Jehovah Witness witnessing, or more like arguing, with someone who stopped by his table to question him about his faith. They, no, he was so loud with saying things like “you don’t understand” “you don’t see where I’m coming from” “you need to understand.” I was getting a bit annoyed and was about to ask him to lower his voice just a little, since it was one of the smaller Starbucks around, when I saw Glenn.
He was standing outside the door looking at the pictures of coffee and pastry. He stared at them for awhile, and then lingered over to the trash can to see if he could find any food. I sat there looking at him and thought, if let him continue to dig through the trash and do nothing, what in the world am I really doing?

So I went outside and asked him if he’d want anything to eat.
“Coffee and bagel with cream cheese will be really good, if you can do that for me.”
As he was setting his place to sit outside, I went inside and got his coffee and bagel.
I asked for his name and he asked for mine, and thanked me, and I went back inside.
I went back to reading the Bible, and realized something was drastically missing about that exchange.
I asked myself, or rather, a voice in my head asked, “How can you love someone if you don’t know them?”
I replied, “I know his name.” The voice asked, “Do you think that’s enough?”

No, of course it wasn’t enough. That voice in my head is always right…
I went back outside and asked if I could join him while he eats.
We talked for a little while and I realized that Glenn is hilariously funny and a bit crazy.
I asked him what he was going to do after Starbucks, and he said, “Oh gee. I don’t know. I’m thinking about heading out to McDonalds down the street and see what I can hustle from people over there.”

We said our goodbyes, and I told him that I hope to see him around so that we can do this again and he just smiled and shook my hand and said, “see you later.” In that moment, I realized that I just made a new friend.