In the last half of the previous century, when I was a little boy growing up in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, my parents kept a burlap sack of magic beans in the pantry. Okay, maybe they weren't really "magic" beans, but they were absolutely enchanting to me.
What that burlap sack held was coffee beans. Like most adults back then, my parents ground their coffee beans themselves. Once ground, the pulverized beans would go into a basket in an electric percolator. Once plugged in, the percolator would push boiling water up a tube and then over the coffee grounds. After continuing this process long enough for you to wash your face and brush your teeth, upon returning to the kitchen, the percolator would be ready, filled with that delicious black elixir of life, coffee.
As a boy, I would slip some of those raw coffee beans out of that burlap bag in the pantry and into my pockets. I loved the taste of the coffee beans and would munch them as snacks throughout the day. I loved the smell of brewing coffee.
However, I despised whatever that stuff was that wound up in my parents’ coffee cups. It didn't taste exactly awful, but it was a close race. It took a while, but I eventually figured out I would never be a cream-and-sugar guy. I would drink my coffee strong and black all my life. My parents, bless their hearts, would have a little coffee with their cream-and-sugar-filled cups.
Refining the raw coffee beans into the hot, drinkable, delightful morning start to our day has undergone many changes since I was a little boy. The different processes all produce the same result, from electric percolators to drip coffee makers and K-cups. I'm old school, fixing my coffee every morning in a battered forty-year-old camping percolator on the stove.
In the same way, as a Christian, I am constantly refined. There are over fifty references in the Bible to our being refined, smelted, strained, sifted, clarified, and otherwise purified as believers. I'm no different from those coffee beans in my pocket from long ago. With every new sunrise (accompanied by a cup of coffee) in this fallen, sinful world, I'm being refined for the glorious new world to come. I hope to have percolated to a proper pureness when that time comes.
In the meantime, I try to remember to praise and thank Him for loving me enough to prepare me for life in His presence. And for coffee.
Are you being refined for His glory?
(photo courtesy of pixabay.com.)
(For more devotions, visit Christian Devotions.)
Kevin Spencer likes to play with words, help others play with them, and is privileged to be a staff writer for Christian Devotions. He lives with his beautiful blessing of a wife, Charlotte, and his amazing collegiate grandson, Caleb.