In my last post, A Hot Mess, I explained how making coffee when the top is still on the travel mug is a bad idea. Today, I would like to revisit that same mess that was made but from a different outlook.
This week, I thought about how that cup represents people today. I have several coffee cups and travel mugs, but I tend to use the same ones most of the time. My favorite travel mug has pictures of my wife and grandkids. My favorite cups to use at home are from Spain and France. While I do not use these exclusively, I use them more than the rest.
Every morning I drink coffee on the way to work. All of the travel mugs I use have lids, and all hold at least 12 ounces of coffee. More than anything, the cup is a tool used for a fundamental purpose. That is if you believe holding coffee so I can drink it is important. However, coffee mugs do not serve their purpose until there is coffee poured into them.
We may not realize that we all serve a purpose, but we do. Some of us may not even know what that purpose is yet. Some of us overthink our mission and get frustrated when we don’t come up with a purpose that seems important to us. Your purpose may not be as crucial to you as it is to others. Some reasons for being here may be to help others, to cause some to laugh or enjoy life, or to make this world a better place. There are many reasons to live. Like the coffee mug, we just need to be there ready to be put to use.
Part of being a useful mug is to be empty until it is time to be used. No one wants to pour coffee into a mug that is filled with something else. Can you imagine a mug being filled with oil and then you add coffee to it before drinking? Yuck. That would be a problem.
The same is true of us. Sometimes we are filled and cannot be put to our proper use. We may have allowed ourselves to be filled with things like bitterness, anger, hatred, selfishness, or jealousy. It is hard to be useful when you are already full.
Now, I would never allow oil to be poured into my coffee mugs. The same is true of my life. I need to make sure I don’t let things into my life that render me useless. I need to fill my life with things that can help me serve my purpose. Things like love, joy, kindness, goodness, and self-control need to be poured into my life so I can do things like helping others or whatever.
Everyone seems to take their coffee in different ways. Some people like cream and sugar. Some like it black. Some like it with more milk than coffee. My coffee cup needs to be filled with what will serve my preferred taste.
I know a successful businessman who once said he would prefer to hire someone off the street with no college education that he could train himself. The college graduates came in with preconceived ideas, thinking they knew everything already and were not open to the ideas that were already working for the company. Those graduates were like cups that were full but did not serve the preferred purpose of the company.
It is better to be an empty vessel that can be filled with what is useful to this life.
2 Timothy 2:20-21(CSB)
“Now in a large house there are not only gold and silver vessels, but also those of wood and clay; some for honorable use and some for dishonorable. So if anyone purifies himself from anything dishonorable, he will be a special instrument, set apart, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work.”
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