God's Brew

Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Thee. St. Augustine

God's Brew Most of you know how much I love coffee. It's one of the great, simple pleasures of every day, and I thoroughly enjoy my "cuppa brew" every morning. Last week this story came across my desk from a chaplain friend of mine. The author is unknown. I think it's worth sharing. A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress and unrest in their work and in 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, and crystal. Some were old and plain-looking; others were expensive and quite exquisite. He told them to help themselves to the coffee. When all of the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said, "If you noticed, all the nice-looking, expensive cups were taken, leaving behind the plain, chipped, 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 the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases it's just more expensive; in many cases it's distracting. What all of you really wanted was the coffee - not the cup. Yet, you automatically went for the best cups; and then you began looking at what cups the others had. Now consider this: LIFE is the coffee. Your jobs, money, possessions and position in society are the cups. They are all just tools to HOLD AND CONTAIN LIFE. The type of cup we have does not define the life we live any more than the cup we drink from defines the coffee that is inside it. God brews the coffee -- not the cup. At first glance this story seems to be about not striving after a lavish lifestyle or a powerful position in society. If that were the case, we could all just dismiss it and say, "Oh well, they're talking about somebody else." But I think the lesson goes deeper here to the parts of us we try to ignore. I dare say most of us, if not all, occasionally deal with a certain amount of discontent over our lot in life. No matter what we have, someone always has it better, don't they? But we need to remember that the longing in our heart is not really for stuff. It is for God himself. Jobs, money, possessions, titles - you name it; in the end they do not satisfy. Our deepest longing, and the one that we must name and pursue with passion, is for our Father in heaven, the One who gives "rivers of living water" in dry places. (John 7:37) The next time you feel dissatisfaction; when life is dry and you have that feeling of restlessness and longing for something other than what is before you, cry out as King David did to the creator of all things: "O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you, in a dry, weary land without water." Psalm 63:1 What we long for is here, Friends. We need only to drink of the living water of LIFE. Enjoy your coffee! Greg