Kindergarten Lessons With God: Why I Started Drinking Coffee Again
Written by Erin Richer
Every so often, God squats down, gets real low, looks us square in the eyes, smiles, and gives a one sentence lesson just like our favorite Kindergarten teachers.
Sometime around Gulfport, Mississippi (this is how I measure my life—by duty stations), I bought a Keurig because daily coffee doses had become part of my vitamin regimen and I was the only person in the house who drank coffee. Even though I could have made a small pot of coffee for probably one tenth the cost of a single Keurig pod, I did my best to convince Jeff that a single serving coffee maker was a necessity. Also, I love gadgets and Keurigs were new technology, but that’s not the point I’m trying make here.
I never actually drank coffee habitually until my second child hit toddlerhood. I have PTSD from the infant/toddler years of parenting. The constant state of being hyper-alert to all that they were doing every moment of every dang day along with their moment to moment maintenance was, well… even the word “exhausting” is still a euphemism for whatever that period of parenting really was. It was traumatic.
All of that to explain why coffee became a necessity and I definitely depended on it. I drank coffee every day all day. Starbucks got more than the toddlers’ share of our budget and things were getting a little out of control. In fact, even when I would feel called to fast in prayer, I would fast everything but coffee and water.
At some point around Washington, DC (about five years after Gulfport), I wanted to go deeper with God. So one morning while it was still dark, I asked God to show me if there was anything in my life I was treating as more important than Him because if there was, I wanted to give it up. He responded, quite simply, “even coffee?” And so, without taking any time to consider His question, I immediately vowed I would never drink coffee again. I shake my head as I look back at this overly ambitious Peter-esque moment.
Hindsight is indeed 20/20 and I can see the foolishness of my spontaneous vow now, but at the time I meant it, and so I tossed every bag of coffee and coffee accoutrement I had at the time: French press, pour-over, filters, milk frother, and more. I’m telling you, I loved coffee and I was a real snob about it. I’ll fast forward here to the end, but imagine a few years and five or six cycles of jumping off and back on the wagon before finally I asked God if I could somehow be excused from this vow I had so regrettably made.
This promise I made was causing nothing but feelings of failure and inadequacy in my relationship with Him. In fact, I believe it was not long after we found out we were moving to the Pacific Northwest, the coffee capital of the world, that I began to get honest with God.
I wanted out.
He had taken me through such a long season of discovering my weakness and I was pretty much crying “uncle" as I petitioned Him to somehow excuse me from this constantly joyless sacrifice I had vowed to make for Him. So much of it didn’t seem right… the things we do for God aren’t supposed to cause angst, condemnation, and frustration. They aren’t supposed to be done begrudgingly, but I didn’t want to just give up. I wanted to know I was released.
I can’t help but shake my head and laugh at myself as I declare that God is so gracious, merciful, and faithful even in these seemingly insignificant things. It just seems so silly to use all of those words for Him in the context of something like coffee. But it wasn’t really about coffee at all. There was a deeper lesson to be learned about the character of God.
I was studying Matthew at the time, mere months from when we were heading to Washington State, when I came upon the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus clarifies the laws of Moses in this sermon. And through it, I was humbly put in my place:
Again, you have heard that it was said to our ancestors, You must not break your oath, but you must keep your oaths to the Lord. But I tell you, don’t take an oath at all: either by heaven, because it is God’s throne; or by the earth, because it is his footstool; or by Jerusalem, because it is the city of the great King. Do not swear by your head, because you cannot make a single hair white or black. But let your ‘yes’ mean ‘yes,’ and your ‘no’ mean ‘no.’ Anything more than this is from the evil one. (Matthew 5:33-37 HCSB)
I was studying Matthew intensively. I immediately felt in my Spirit God answering me here in this verse. I imagined Him smiling as He said to me quite plainly, “I never asked you to give up coffee.”
I replayed the very vivid memory of my time in prayer when I vowed to never drink coffee again and I started to giggle and I imagine God joining in it with me. What a sweet elementary lesson…
Of COURSE! He never meant for me to endure such feelings of failure and inadequacy in my relationship with Him. He never told me to give up coffee. I offered that on a foolish whim. He simply asked me to check my heart on an issue, and I entered into a vow I could never keep. For me to make a vow with God was to assert that I had the power to keep a promise to God. The whole point of the Gospel is that we can’t keep our end of any promise to God. The Gospel—the GOOD NEWS— is that God made a covenant promise to us in which He would save His people from their sins, and we have nothing to offer in return except to trust and believe that He can and will do what He promises. What a simple but memorable life application lesson: The law was given to show us how sinful we are, so that we will keep the way of righteousness, which, from the very beginning, was and always would be provided by God through faith in Christ. The response on our part is trust and obedience paired with grace for when we fail.
I can’t help but snicker in gratitude for the gospel as I sit and write all of this out with fullness of joy and a piping hot cup of Tanzanian peaberry coffee that was roasted in the garage by my husband who loves me and brewed in my fancy espresso contraption.