Talking to Strangers

I have an amazing Fair Trade Coffee shop in my apartment complex with an amazing view of the river.  The baristas are all really fun folks and the atmosphere is fantastic!  Given all these things, I spend quite a bit of time in the coffee shop.  I don't believe I've ever approached someone I don't know, but I've had a few people come up to me.

One day I was working from the coffee shop and a lady came up to me and complimented me about how hard I had been working.  The irony of the situation was that I had finished working for the day and I think I had been checking ESPN.com.

Another time, I brought the book "Celebration of Discipline" in with me because our small group is going through it.  I actually wasn't reading it as I was on my laptop.  A guy who was meeting there with a prayer group came up to me out of the blue and asked me, "How is God working in your life?".  It caught me by surprise (I also hadn't realized that he had saw me bring in the book).  I was thinking that was a pretty gutsy question to go up and ask a complete stranger.  It took me a few minutes to come up with an answer, but then we had a really good conversation.  He asked if he could pray for me and I ended up praying for him as well.

It got me to thinking about risk taking.  I wish I was so bold as that.  I saw a video for a local Church here where the person was traveling to Church for a service.  Along the way, they traveled on the subway and walked on the streets.  All the while, captions would pop up over the various people he passed saying things like "lonely" or "going through a divorce".  The point being that we are constantly passing people all the time who are dealing with things and we never interact with them.  I'm a decently social person, but I never approach strangers; I usually avoid talking to people on planes.  I saw that video and thought "great video" and then of course went on with living my life the same way I always had.  Perhaps I need to be a bit more open to talking to strangers.