Today was a huge landmark: I brought coffee to work.
This may not seem like a big deal, but TRUST ME. It’s a BIG DEAL. It means I woke up this morning, had the desire and the willpower to make coffee and to walk out the front door with it. I drank it black and WITHOUT A LID. Talk about adulting!
To fully understand my progress, you would first have to have fully understood me a year ago, six months ago, or even three months ago…
A myriad of vices and flaws that make up my person would have hindered me in a thousand different ways. I have slowly been changing, shifting, evolving… God has been working! Subtleties that I didn’t even realize were happening.
There are little tweaks, like adjusting my attitude when sleep deprived, or just my attitude in the mornings in general. Like getting rid of junk I don’t need and organizing my bedroom to make getting dressed in the morning a streamlined no-brainer. Like learning to treat myself, to go the extra mile and “spoil” myself with little acts. Drinking my coffee black, although not very spiritual, just means that I’ve grown to try things outside of my comfort zone, and even LIKE some of them. MUCH WOW.
My point is that people change – slowly and subtly. It occurs to me that this mere act of bringing a pre-prepared cup of coffee is an example of how little we know of each other’s hearts. Walking into work with my very adult cup of coffee was naturally not something that captured the attention of any of my coworkers. Nobody stood with their mouth hanging open in shock, nor did they comment on how spiritually mature I was for bringing my own coffee. Although we spend eight hours a day together, five days a week, it is likely that this morning they only saw what was presented on the surface – a girl with a cup of coffee arriving to work like everybody else. They did not see the cup of coffee for what it truly was to me – a significant milestone in my walk towards Christ-like maturity. However, I know that Jesus saw beneath the surface – He saw the process behind the coffee. I can only imagine that He was as proud as I was at the sight of me walking in with that cup of coffee. After all, He saw the coffee for more than what it looked like through human eyes.
1 Samuel 16:7 – “the Lord said to Samuel, ‘Do not look at his appearance… For the Lord does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.'”
Note to Self – Let God do the work and just love Him and the people around you the best that you know how. Ask God for wisdom regarding all things, including how to love! Let God do the work and you just be available for Him to pour his perfect love into all the places that need improvement. Only God knows our walk fully, in an intimate way. We humans can never know what our friend, spouse, or co-worker is going through – not truly. Only God knows your walk. He even has a plan for your walk that extends around the corner… All you have to do is listen.
If you had asked me a year ago if I would be the type of person to take a lidless cup of black coffee to work first thing in the morning and enjoy the living daylights out of it, I would have thought you were nuts.
What is your “Cup of Coffee”? What marks a growth milestone in your life?
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