The Lesson Learned in Making Coffee

 Therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, put on tender mercies, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering; bearing with one another, and forgiving one another, if anyone has a complaint against another; even as Christ forgave you, so you also must do. But above all these things put on love, which is the bond of perfection.

Colossians 3:12-14 NKJV

To everyone who has ever gone to get a cup of coffee and found the community pot not exactly empty (letter of the law), but not enough coffee left in the pot to extinguish the fire on a pregnant ant – this one’s for you.

I have found that an office coffee pot can be a great witness/indicator of one’s true Christianity. I can see you rolling your eyes, so let me just tell you a story or two and you tell me if you can find anything that’s familiar…

Let’s say you’re the first person in the office, so being the nice person you are, you put on the first pot of coffee. Rather than waste time, you go back to your office to turn on your computer, line out your task list, etc. By the time you get back to the coffee pot, it’s got one-eighth of an inch of coffee left in it. There are pre-measured packs of coffee that only have to be slipped in the dispenser, but someone else could not figure out how to do that. Their rationale? There was coffee left in the pot...technically, at least.

You start another pot of coffee. This time you hang around and if you’re fortunate enough to have a multi-pot brewer, you wait and you start the next pot, too, then go back to your desk. You go back about an hour later and there are TWO pots with so little coffee remaining that even if you combined them, there wouldn’t be enough for half a cup of coffee. You grumble under your breath, but you start another pot for whoever else will be drinking coffee before lunch.

That afternoon, you’re sitting at your desk and you smell something burning. Following your nose, you wind up in front of the coffee pot to discover the one-sixteenth of an inch of coffee that was left on the burner to bubble and char and burn into the bottom of the pot. You go back to your desk and make a sign...Any of this sound familiar?

The first day the sign was posted, and even part of the next day, when I’d gone in there a few times and there was no coffee, I thought to myself, “Fine –what will they do when there’s no coffee made?” And then I thought about what if a friend or co-maker was the next person in there – would I want that person to go without? And as I was standing there in front of the coffee pot, God reminded me that HE makes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust and conviction pierced my soul.

The truth is there are always going to be people who choose to care about other people and people who don’t – or won’t. And we have to decide for ourselves whether our caring is self-LESS or motivated by what it will bring us in return…which would make it selfish. Scripture clearly states that the world will know us by our love, not our grumbling.

If someone else benefits from me making coffee - even though they’re a drinker not a maker - maybe eventually they’ll learn to care…after all, I believe in miracles. But, even if that never happens, what kind of witness am I? How am I representing Christ? Aren’t I to be like Him? He gave Himself for EVERY one of us.

As a Christian, I am to be motivated by self-LESS and too often, I fail. So, even in making a simple pot of coffee, God can teach me a lesson.

This cup’s for you.

Prayer:

Father,

            Help me to love as You love. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; my cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life; and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. In Jesus’ Name we pray. Amen