I was recently travelling on 80 through Indiana and I stopped at a rest stop for obvious reasons. I am a patron of Starbucks and I needed to refresh my caffeine supply. So I got in line and checked my phone and after a few minutes realized I hadn’t moved, and that the person in front of me was highly agitated.
The staff there was clearly inexperienced (I am being nice). They were trying, all 3 of them, to negotiate an unusual method of payment on their register, and as they explained in a way that made no sense what was happening, the person in front of me was turning shades of red. Finally the crisis passed and more orders were taken.
But by then the line was long, they didn’t know how to work the microwave, not sure about how to make some of the drinks. Painfully slowly the very long line moved along. There was a young woman, obviously a college student travelling with her family, who was waiting the longest. Her father kept encouraging her to complain, and her response was “I trust the system.”
All of the older adults knowingly rolled their eyes. Trusting the system. Nope. Never a good idea. In the end it turned out there were three of us waiting for a chai we had each ordered in a particular way. The barrista managed to make a chai that none of us had ordered. I took it, told the barrista about the patient and trusting young woman, and made a run for it.
And as my passengers snoozed I thought about trust, and trusting systems, and how much I admired the faith and hope of that young woman. I do not trust the system, but I am willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. I also think we have to be savvy evaluators, and use our Christian values as a litmus test to every situation.
So when I am determining, discerning, the good of a situation, I am holding up Gospel values—is this situation life-giving, compassionate, respectful of all people? How would I behave if Jesus were there? Is there a victim, and if so, how do we advocate for those who are being hurt? I wanted to say to that young woman, have your wonderful attitude, and be open to intervening for justice. Or in this case, her overdue chai.