Chris Jackson

This is What I Think About (and You Suffer Through) at Late Hours in All-Night Starbucks

It’s nearly three in the morning now, and I’m not all that tired.  So I went to a place that primarily serves coffee.

After looking through yesterday’s shoot and then seeing an image from a Connecticut beach, I realized (or was it remembered?) that I really hate beachfront architecture.  But that bothers me a lot, because I like the idea of the shoreline, and I like the ocean (but not in a 1970s nautical manner.)  What gives?  Also, I really need a pair of sunglasses, but they’d have to be prescription and that makes them expensive.  Very, very expensive.

It’s just hard to think about anything of much consequence at All-Night Starbucks.  I have never seen (or heard) louder baristas.  Or patrons, for that matter.  But I suppose it’s fitting; this place is a dirty shambles, which really makes sense, since it is, after all, open for twenty-four hours a day.  If your home were open to whomever wished to enter at all hours of the day and night, it’d be filthy.  And very probably empty.

But here I sit, in All-Night Starbucks, across from the Galleria.  I’ve had a mildly productive day, I can’t complain.  The last few days, photographically speaking, have been wonderful.  Shot a great engagement session up in Huntsville, and spent a whole day (well, in parts) doing a photoshoot in various places.  Job satisfaction, that’s what it’s called, and I have it.  I know too many people who don’t, and that’s only somewhat reasonable.  Work is hard, even if it’s good.  It’s not like we deserve to have jobs we love, but with that in mind, I know that it’s best to be thankful for jobs that we do love.

I just thought at this point in my life, I’d be somewhere different.  To clarify, that’s anything but a complaint.  When I think long and hard about where I once wanted to be, and where I could have ended up, I’m so grateful that I am where I am now.  The Lord really has been good to me.

It’s His power of redemption, one of His favorite things, I’d say.  It’s his ability (and willingness) to take a lifetime of both mistakes and deliberate wrongdoings and make them work together not only for the good of those who love Him, but ultimately for the good of His glory.

That kind of things gets a lot of thought these days, living down in Houston after a move that I still question.  I can honestly say that I really may never know if it was in my best interest - or more importantly, in the Lord’s - to come down here.  But I know that since I’ve been here, God has really done something with me, through me, in spite of myself.  And it really looks like I’m going somewhere, and if I can manage to remain truly obedient, He will actually get me there, so in those days, the people will have little choice but to acknowledge that it was not by man’s strength or might that my life meant something, but by the very hand of God.  And Christ will rightly be glorified.

So maybe it isn’t that hard to think of something worth thinking about in a loud Starbucks.  Perhaps the mere thought of  our gracious King is more resonant than any sound one could ever hear.