“Hey Tim!” I hear from across the cafe.
I stop and look. Sitting at the bar is a brown haired girl (well…really a woman now) and she’s trying to catch my attention with a youthful wave.
“Hey, back,” I answer.
She stands to greet me and I say, “Susan! I haven’t seen you in awhile. What’s up?”
“I just got back from the Alive fest! It was just awesome. Have you ever been to Alive?”
“Yes,” I reply.
The next few minutes seem like hours as we visit together talking about the Alive festival and about her life and faith. You need to know that this woman was once a girl. Susan has been a “cafe kid” for nearly three years, through most of her high school years. She’s battled facial paralysis and faced joining and then leaving the Mormon church of latter day saints. Needless to say, Susan has been through a lot spiritually, emotionally, and physically.
During these tumultuous years, our volunteers have had the privilege of serving Susan, sharing in her life struggles, praying with and for her, and telling her about Jesus. So it was a great blessing to see her again and learn how she graduated high school and is now part of a local Medina church where she is connected and discovering in new ways how much Jesus loves her.
How much is one soul worth? How much of our time and our money and our prayers is Susan worth?
Cups Cafe has been a presence in Medina 5 days a week, season after season, for 3 1/2 years serving young people like Susan. It has taken donors (like you) consistently giving the way a heart beats, day after day, month after month, year after year to make a difference in a soul like Susan’s. The cafe volunteers are novice farmers. We are seed casters. And we’ve been casting seeds for awhile now.
A friend of mine joked, “1 outta’ 4 people will come to faith according to Jesus!”
He was referring to one of Jesus’ parables. The Parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:3-8 reads, “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown.”
Not all of our efforts to share and live out our faith before others will result in a changed soul but that doesn’t mean we give up trying or limit our seed casting efforts, because the seed that falls on the good soil of the heart of that one soul is worth the effort and sacrifice.
It appears that Susan is 1 outta’ 4. She has not only returned from Alive but her faith is becoming alive…more and more. Thank you for making this possible!