Coffee Shop Reflections At Year's End

Well, it's official.

I am not as young as I used to be.

It's after 10 pm and I have just returned home from Starbucks. I met college student there who had been a student in my Sunday School class just a few years back.

The caffeinated effects of my Gingerbread Latte have not yet worn off and I find myself pretty wide awake and reflecting on my conversation with this bright young lady.

She is literally half my age -yet even as she is coming to terms with her adulthood, I found that we have lots in common.

As we caught up on each other's lives we found we kept coming back to a few themes in our discussion as it related to both of us:

- We know that life happens in phases.
- We know that God is teaching us how to both give and receive His grace.
- We know that we are on a journey where our final destination is worth all the work along way.

No, I am no longer 20 and that life phase has long since passed. But I know I am intentionally in the life phase I am in now. God has placed me here, in this time at the place.

God IS actively teaching me to give His grace to others and patiently showing me how to receive it from Him as I reflect on my own thoughts, words and deeds.

It is all a part of this journey He is taking me on. I'm so glad He didn't just point the way out to me and say, "Good Luck!," but that He is my ever-present guide and support all along the trek.

Yes, the way is narrow and hard and not-at-all how I would plot it out, but I KNOW that He wastes nothing and He will be glorified in every high and every low along the path.

As my friend returns to finish her junior year in a few weeks and I resume my "normal" the first of next week, it will be a new year. 2016 will have begun whether either of us was ready for it or not.

I may not be accustomed to late nights in coffee shops or, at my age, be able to handle that much caffeine past 7 pm. Despite all that my younger friend and I will say goodbye to 2015 certain that our God holds not only our futures, but us in His very capable hands.