It's Not About the Coffee or the Sandwich

I wanted to plan the perfect lunch. While working as a secretary, I was tasked with making lunch reservations for my boss to meet with a colleague coming a long way to see her. This lunch would be a special meeting for the two of them, and I wanted it to be perfect. I struggled with the time restraints of both schedules and the lighting and noise level in each restaurant in determining the best location for conversation. When my supervisor reviewed her calendar and saw I hadn’t made the reservations yet, she asked, “Why?”

I shared my concerns with her, noting that the best location didn’t serve the best food, and assured her that I was still researching. She explained that she appreciated all the effort I was putting into this one-hour lunch, then declared, “But it's not about the sandwich.”

She was correct. The lunch invitation was an effort to spend time together, have face-to-face conversations, share encouragement, and experience growth in the workplace. And that is exactly what developed—a valued mentoring relationship.

Years later, I learned it's also not about the coffee when a lady from my church invited me to meet her for a cup. I was excited to accept her invitation. We soon agreed on a time and place, and I thought how miserable it would be to force a cup of coffee down that late in the morning. A fruit smoothie, yes! A glass of ice water, absolutely! But coffee, I was done with coffee by that time of day.

Should I have turned her down for coffee? Or should I have suggested something that would satisfy me instead? I could have simply said, “I’ll meet you for a bottle of water.” That doesn’t sound fun. Maybe I should have suggested an earlier time for our meeting. After all, the invite was for coffee, right? I figured she needed an excuse to get a macchiato and a shot of espresso to assist her through the day. And I wasn’t about to disappoint my new friend.

That invitation for coffee wasn’t the last one I’ve accepted or extended, and it ended, like most of them do, with a new friend or a strengthened relationship with an old friend.

Don’t get caught up in the details, accept the invitation knowing it has nothing to do with coffee, and a lunch invite has nothing to do with sandwiches.

So, who will you extend an invite to? Will it be for coffee, a sandwich, or a relationship?

Get creative. What else could you invite a new friend to? A walk—will it be about the walk? A library visit—will it be about books? To a game of cards—will it be about the game? Whatever you do, make it about the relationship.

Resources: Read Luke 10:38-42, Hebrews 10:24-25, Titus 2: 3-5

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