How Starbucks Saved My Life

I just finished How Starbucks Saved My Life, by Michael Gates Gill.

Here's an interview with the author:


"Never close the door on opportunity," he says. That's what this book is about. It's about second chances and new life rising up from the ashes of the old. There are plenty of places in this book where Gill could have gone into detail about past mistakes and the reasons for his current situation, but the book was about new life and restoration. He often refers back to experiences from his previous life, contrasting them with his current situation, and it is continuously revealing how empty his previous life was despite all the trappings of 'success' that hung around him.

The question that sits with me at the end of this book is 'what is success'? Is it money or fame? Or is it something deeper, that rests within the soul, that can never be measured? Is success something that only we can measure at the end of the day, based on how we choose to grade it? What are our goals? What do we want in life?

This book does a great job of forcing us to ask ourselves how we see the world. As a Christian, I want to push even farther and force churches to ask how they are defining success. What does 'success' mean in the Christian world, and why are we chasing that rather than the faithfulness God calls us to live? How can we be faithful to the Word of God and let the trappings of worldly success fall away? There is always hope, always a chance at creating once more, letting the old die away and giving birth to something new, something beautiful, in our present lives.