Keeping it "Just Right"

One of the delights of each morning is having a fresh cup of hot coffee. I’ve not acquired the taste for drinking it black – I enjoy a little sweetener and enough cream to make it a caramel color. I even have a system of adding the cream and sweetener – I put them in the cup before I add the coffee, then when the coffee is poured in it turns that perfect caramel color and has these little bubbles on top that make it soooo good! Do I sound a little fanatical about my coffee? I guess I am!

There is a down-side to not drinking black coffee, and that’s when I go to a restaurant and have it with my meal. I’ll add the cream and the sweetener and get it just the way I like it and then while I’m engulfed in conversation with those at my table the waitress will come along and add hot coffee to my cup making my once perfectly flavored coffee diluted into an awful gray! Where did she come from anyway? Sometimes I think they hang from the ceiling and wait for unsuspecting coffee drinkers to set their cup down and then – Splash! Their diluting duty is done! It’s not that I don’t like hot coffee, I do, it’s just that in their attempt to re-warm my cup they ruin the caffeine perfection I was enjoying! Back to the creamer and sweetener I go adding and stirring until the blackness disappears and changes into coffee heaven!

The same kind of diluting can happen in our hearts. We may have gotten up and filled our cup (heart) that morning with the Word, with time in prayer and we were made glad by the Lord’s presence. Now our day is in full gear and everywhere we go there is noise – music blaring in each restaurant and store. Televisions are yelling out at us in the doctor’s waiting areas. Our phones are ring everywhere we go…beeping, texting; it’s constant. Even at home the children may be fussing or just playing, but, whatever they’re doing, it’s not calm! It’s rare to find quietness. Our hearts get diluted. We look in the “cup” and there’s blackness where earlier it was just right! What we need to do is the same thing I do when the waitress dilutes my coffee – we need to go back to where we got the sweetness and add some more. Turn on some heart lifting music. Listen to a CD of a message that will encourage and challenge you as you drive to town. Turn on a radio broadcast like Revive Our Hearts (http://www.reviveourhearts.com/ )Post little notes around your house of things you read that are a blessing – verses, quotes from good books, or a line from a song or message. These are little “shots of cream” that can be added to your heart throughout a busy day. We each fight the dilution of the busyness and noise of the world, but there is a solution – go back to the source of the sweetness and add some more!

Starbucks anyone?