Is Your Soul Drinking Bad Coffee?
I love good coffee. I wouldn’t call myself a coffee connoisseur, but I do own an Aeropress and a coffee grinder. Sipping good coffee is like spending time with an old friend. It’s warm, inviting, familiar, and nourishing to the soul.
Somehow, I spent the summer sipping mediocre coffee.
My family spent six weeks living in an extended stay hotel while my husband and I staffed a summer mission. Along with the stay came unlimited free coffee.
I vaguely remember that the first time I tasted the coffee, I said, “Bleh. It’ll do.” I learned the perfect ratio of sugar and creamer to coffee to make it drinkable. Pretty soon it became routine. I even started thinking I was enjoying it a little.
Then one day, I went out to brunch with the staff women and I ordered coffee. This coffee was the good kind. The kind of coffee that required no condiments or, if you’re like me, only two packets of sugar. Sipping this delectable brew was like going home and feeling familiar arms wrapped around me.
My eyes were opened. I suddenly realized I had been drinking bad coffee all summer. It took six sugar packets and three creamers to make it mediocre coffee. I had settled for sugar-coated mediocre and didn’t realize it until I drank from a cup of amazing.
How often we settle for sugar-coated mediocrity when we could have a cup of endless perfection! We crave after idols which promise us glory, security, and comfort only to find that we need to keep dumping on packets of sugar to make these idols bearable.
When we finally get a taste of the Perfect Lover of our souls, Jesus Christ, we realize how dull and lifeless are the things with which we content our souls. We may content ourselves with sugar-coated mediocrity, but Jesus is the only One who truly satisfies the depths of our souls. When we savor Him, we are home with His familiar arms wrapped around us. Only then can our souls find perfect rest and satisfaction.
C.S. Lewis says in his book, The Weight of Glory:
“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
Let us not be too easily pleased. Let us seek true joy in savoring the only One who can provide satisfaction for our souls. Let us not settle for sugar-coated mediocrity.
" Taste and see that the Lord is good;
blessed is the one who takes refuge in him. "
Psalm 34:8