A Sunday morning coffee thought or two

I like Sunday mornings. It’s like you need Saturdays as a buffer from the previous week – you have errands to run, things to do – but it kinda starts slowing down on Saturday afternoon and evening. By Sunday your body and mind relaxes and you can get ready to be refueled for the next week. The coffee on a Sunday morning tastes better to me, too. I usually drink it slower and enjoy it. I always seem to drink the other days on the run.

I rec’d a good email this morning about coffee and that reminded me of an old Focus on the Family radio show I’ve remembered for 20 or so years. I thought I’d share both.

Dr. Dobson had a very wise guest on one day back when I was in my mid 20’s. She was talking about people: who we are and how we appear to one another. She compared us to coffee cups. She said that coffee cups are containers that are not transparent – just by looking at a cup on the cabinet you have no idea what is inside it.

It might be a silly cup someone gave you as a gift or a sentimental message with a special memory attached. It might be a plain colored cup with no frills. It might be brand new or very worn. People are the same. When we see one another, we are seeing the outer ‘holder’ only – and they are all different. The contents of the cup and it’s holder have no bearing on one another. A coffee cup can hold delicious warm, sweet hot chocolate or it can contain cold, bitter coffee that is much too strong to enjoy.

However, if you happen to bump against the cup, then the contents of the cup made known – possibly all over your cabinet or even the floor! Then you know what was really inside that cup.

How does that compare to life? What happens when we are bumped? What is inside us bubbles out. What are the bumps of life? They are the times we become angry, bad things happen to us, we feel stressed. We can’t hide what’s inside us at those times – because it just like that teetering cup of coffee – the cup can’t contain our real contents. If we are filled with delicious warm coffee – that’s what spills out on everyone around us – but if we are filled with bitterness, anger, and revenge – that’s what is exposed and poured around us.

I have found this to be so true in the 20 something years since I heard this story. People who seem rather crusty on the outside can be the most warm, forgiving folks when their lives are bumped. However, some of the nicest looking people seem to make 180 deg. shifts in personality when someone makes them angry. Whoa! Where did that come from? They always appeared to be such a nice, caring person. The bottom line is that that was always inside them – but they were able to hide it within their ‘cups.’

Isn’t that a great analogy of life?

Now – here’s the email with the other coffee story:

A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned to complaints about stress in work and life.

Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic,glass, crystal, styrofoam, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite, telling them to help themselves to the coffee.

When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress.

Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink.

What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups…and then you began eyeing each other’s cups.

Now consider this: Life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of Life we live.

Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us.”

enjoy your coffee.

alice