A Starbuck Lesson

“Oh shit, I have to finish 3 essays by tonight”
“Aiya okay, I’m here to encourage you mah”
“I really need to get a H2A average this semester so I can do honours next year”
“Don’t worry, sure can one lah”

His version of encouragement is yakking to the poor girl who just desperately wants to get her work done. Turns out that they’re from OCF and they’ve just met last night. Talking about chicken rice and chomp chomp doesn’t really sound like encouragement to me anyway, neither does talking about Madonna and her expiry date. From what I gather, he doesn’t have any exams but he’s just wasted 1hour (out of 24 hours = 4.2% of the day) of her time talking about stuff that no one really gives a shit about. No only that, he started singing and people around were sniggering to themselves probably thinking “dumb Christian gay boy” – very stereotypical not exactly the best testimony.

The point I’m trying to get across is that as Christian brothers and sisters, we need to think about HOW we encourage each other. We need to bear in mind context, given stress levels at this time and consider how it affects the person you’re trying to encourage, rather than how you yourself can benefit from it.

Sometimes, actually most of the time, people (especially OCF girls) are way too nice to say “STFU I just want to do my work”. Therefore as the “encourager”, you need to be sensitive enough isn’t? I think she would appreciate an sms or a short phone call, than pointless, half-hearted conversation. Surely that will more than suffice, rather than trying to get in her pants during exam time. Seriously, how low will some people go?

Anyway, enough rants. Christians can be so unlovable at times.