It all Started with a New Brand of Coffee

We thought school would be canceled today. All the forecasts pointed to this storm, which is really more sleet and ice than it is loads of snow. It's a bit gray out. Not many cars are passing by. I love this kind of quiet day.

Bill and I enjoyed a longer chat this morning, sipping our Dunkin Donuts brand coffee and savoring the quietness of a morning where our first challenge was to get Harry dried off and keep him from climbing onto the couch. The wet-dog smell mixed with the aroma of our hot coffee. We used to enjoy Folgers brand coffee but recently tried Dunkin Donuts coffee, brewed at home. Wow. It tastes as good at our home as it does at the Dunkin Donuts shops. It's a new treat we've adopted for our morning routine.

Sometimes it really is the little things- that we can easily change- that help set us on a course of being able to make the big changes. I've known people who are so stuck in a rut that changing the brand of coffee they buy would have been an earth shaking decision. I can't afford that kind of rigidity. I've got to be continually growing, changing, trying new things. I've got to always be ready for fresh new ideas, new tastes of spring in the dead of winter- or I won't at all be ready for the kind of major winds of change that God often employs.

We often want God to do major, new miraculous works in our life yet we demonstrate a resistance to change in so many ways we are unaware of. If we take the time to look at our little choices we have to make daily, will we see that we often try new things? If we can't handle little changes, what makes us think we'll be ready for a big change when God brings it into our lives? There are often subtle, unspoken things in our life that scream out the message "I'm not changing a thing- and yet I'm asking God to change me." Some people can see this in us- but we often can't see it in ourselves.

So try taking a little inventory of your habits. As the Psalmist said, "And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." (Psalm 139:24). Look at how it's worded in two other translations: "And see if there be any hurtful way in me, ...." (NASB) and "... see if there be any grievous way in me;..." (Darby).

Sin is not always am obvious act of disobedience and selfishness. There are sins of commission and sins of omission. Something we do that hurts our progress, that grieves the Holy Spirit, is when we resist change. We resist change (an assertive stance) so that we won't have to make a change(a sin of omission).

We are called to be a "peculiar people", a people of pilgrimage, of violent undertakings that shake up our comfortable soul. For some of us, that sounds so radical. But it's also somewhat radical for us to try a new recipe, go to a new event, call someone we don't know and invite them to a Bible Study. And if we won't do those less radical things, why do we think we'll ever get to the earth-shaking, mountain moving things that people of faith are called to do?

"Take a step into the new thing I am doing," He says. That new thing may be a step farther along that unknown path, or maybe just a step into a new place for the sake of seeing something new- because its in your power to do so. Yes, there are many things that we have absolutely no control over. But in the areas that we do have some say-so, let's make a change. Let's think a new thought, try a new route, consider a new way of doing something. Then maybe we'll actually have eyes to see that new thing He is doing in our lives. When He whispers to our soul, "Do you not perceive it?" we'll be able to answer, "Why, yes! I do, Lord".