Grace Like Coffee

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me.” (2 Corinthians 12:9 NIV)

“Don’t ever let anyone tell you that fairy tales aren’t real. I drink a potion made from magic beans every day, and it brings me back to life.” At least, that’s what the silly meme about coffee says. I think there’s a lot of symbolism and application for life in this little running joke. Some people say that the Bible is akin to Grimm’s Fairy Tales. Others say that they’re not fully participating in the day unless they have coffee. Caffeine can be a game changer for many of us!

A few weeks ago, Pastor Vic asked us in a sermon how we all got to church that morning. We had three answers to choose from, and before I heard the choices, I already heard a few people around me muttering that “coffee” was how they got there. The choices Pastor Vic gave us were: a vehicle, by choice, or by grace. As I thought about it, I realized that coffee most likely falls in the grace category.

Grace is like a “get out of jail free” card in Monopoly. It’s a pass; a reset button. Grace is a way of understanding that it doesn’t matter if we did something right or wrong, because we have an opportunity to transcend our issues and be redeemed by a power that is higher than ourselves. And really, that’s coffee! No, I’m joking. It’s God! Although, when it comes down to it, God created coffee, so we all get to experience his grace every morning.

I think we all can relate to the idea that we have to do everything for ourselves, believing that in order to earn a pat on the back, we have to work for it. But God operates differently. God is perfectly fine with our brokenness (no pun intended) and our imperfections. I’m sure that either you or I have, at some point, said to another that what we’re doing just isn’t good enough and that we don’t believe we’ll get credit for any of it. Thankfully, in the grand scheme of things, that is exactly what God’s grace is for. Grace is there to pick up the slack. Grace will carry us to the end of the task at hand. Grace will step in and remind us that it’s okay to make mistakes.

Similarly, coffee has that power for many of us, to fill in the gaps and make us whole. There are the jokes about people being zombies when they wake up, so that drinking coffee is like raising the dead. There are others that imply we’re sleep-walking until the coffee is served. It goes on and on, but it illustrates something that we can all understand; God’s grace is accessible to all who desire it, and it will make us whole. Not by anything we do, but by God’s lovingkindness.

Nicole can be reached via email here.