Mondays are Starbucks days. I read. I write. I pray. I journal.

A woman a couple of seats down was sipping on her coffee and charging her phone. Or she thought she was charging her phone. Except the outlet didn’t work where she sat. In fact, I came to learn, the outlets along this side of the Starbucks do not work at all. After a few minutes of sitting and sipping on her coffee, she checked her phone to discover that her phone wasn’t charging.

She tried multiple outlets along the wall. And when that didn’t work, she tried multiple chargers. She had two chargers with her! I was impressed. She was traveling with two chargers! Finally, one of the baristas noticed her struggling with the outlets to inform her that none of the outlets along this particular wall worked.

It wasn’t her chargers. It wasn’t the outlets. It was that there was no power along this wall. The outlets looked like outlets. They looked promising. But there was no power. No matter how hard she tried, no matter how many outlets or chargers she went through, she wasn’t ever going to get her phone charged along this wall.

Many things in this world promise life, joy, purpose, peace – shalom. They look like good sources of shalom. Only one problem: they don’t have power. They are all counterfeit. So when a new girl/boyfriend doesn’t work, we try a different outlet to find shalom. We try careers/getting wealthy. And when that doesn’t work, we trying a different outlet – vacations, friendships, children, etc.

There is nothing necessarily evil or bad in these things. It’s just that they don’t have power. They were not created to provide shalom. Only God can do that.

Need shalom? Go to the source. Plug into his power.