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Coffee Came Back while I was sitting at a Route 66 diner not long ago, hands wrapped around a cup of coffee, watching the quiet rhythm of the morning unfold. The kind of place where the plates clink softly, the coffee keeps coming, and nobody’s in too much of a hurry.
The waitress walked up and smiled in a way that told me she wasn’t just being polite. She said she had listened to the last episode of Healing Highway and really enjoyed it. Then she added that she was looking forward to the new Roadside Notes coming out on Thursday. I smiled back, surprised and grateful. You never really know who and when people are listening. Most of the time, it feels like you’re just putting something out into the world and hoping it lands somewhere it’s needed.
Coffee Came Back With A Smile
She poured a little more coffee, paused, then looked at me again and said, “You’re always buying coffee and breakfast for people. I’d like to cover yours today.”
For a second, I didn’t quite know what to say. Not because of the coffee. It wasn’t about the money. It was the moment. I’ve sat at enough counters to know how this usually works. You come in, you order, you pay, you leave. Maybe you nod at someone on the way out. Maybe you don’t. Most days move like that, quiet and unnoticed. But every once in a while, something small breaks the pattern.
Why Coffee Came Back
I’ve bought coffee for people before. Picked up a breakfast here and there. Nothing big. Nothing worth talking about. Just those small moments where you feel like maybe you can leave things a little better than you found them. I never thought much about it after. Until that morning.
There was a young man a few stools down, maybe in his twenties, listening just enough to be curious. When she mentioned she had a bag ready for the pantry at the church I volunteer with, he leaned in and asked, “Matthew 25 Lives… what’s that?” It wasn’t a challenge. It was a real question.
I laughed softly, not at him, but at the timing of it all. I looked at him and said, “That right there… that’s Matthew 7:7 in action.” He looked at me like I might have skipped a step, so I kept it simple. Sometimes you give without expecting anything back. You just do what you can, where you are, with what you have. You feed someone, help someone, notice someone who might otherwise be overlooked. Then, without planning it, something comes back around. Not always the same way and not always from the same person, but it shows up.
Sitting there, I realized something I probably should’ve known already. The small things count more than we give them credit for. Not the big gestures or the ones people talk about, but the quiet ones that happen when nobody’s keeping score. Most of life is lived in those moments. A diner counter, a warm cup of coffee, and a conversation that wasn’t planned.
Maybe that’s the point. Not to keep track of what you’ve done or to wait for it to come back, but to live in a way that leaves things a little better than you found them. And trust that somewhere down the road, in a way you didn’t expect, it might just come back around.
✨ Roadside Reflection:
Sometimes the smallest things are the ones that come back around. A cup of coffee you didn’t think twice about buying… a quiet moment where you chose kindness instead of looking the other way… those things don’t disappear. They move. You might not see where they go, and you definitely won’t control how they return, but every once in a while, life hands you a moment that reminds you it mattered. So if you’re wondering whether the small things count… they do. More than you think. Maybe more than you’ll ever know.
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