I'm going to surprise, nay, shock, most of you reading this...
I forgot I had a blog...
I can hear your astonished gasps. Yes, indeed, I forgot something.
But oh well! What's done is done, and here I am now, so I guess let's move speedily along, shall we.
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with coffee. Growing up, it was ubiquitous in our house. Both of my parents were cup-every-morning drinkers, and there was something almost magical about it all. The gentle burble of the percolator signalling the start of the new day. The welcoming aroma luring you from bed with the promise of something hot to drink. The steam lazily lifting from the mug to dance in the early morning sunlight. You lift the mug, take a deep breath, and sip...
AND SPIT IT OUT BECAUSE ITS SO BITTER AND ANGRY AT EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING!
At least that's how it seemed to me as a kid. And let's be honest, I can't really blame it. If I was plucked from my home, burnt to a crisp, pulverized, drowned, and boiled, I'd probably be a little bitter too. And so, despite loving the smell and sound of coffee, I hated the taste, and so stood wistfully aside, dreaming of being a grown up and actually liking the vile concoction, not understanding how either of my parents could stomach it.
Dad always took his coffee black as pitch. We used to joke that he'd probably be content to chew the burnt beans and rinse with hot water every so often. Mom, however, was one of those people who used coffee as an excuse to justify drinking a whole cup of french-vanilla creamer. For her, just enough coffee to turn the mixture a subtle beige was sufficient.
Finally, as an adult with two children, I bit the bullet and decided to overcome my historical distaste and "embrace the bitterness". I started on easy street. I'd brew a concoction that was 3 parts coffee, 1 part hot cocoa mix, and a single teaspoon of salt. This, with just a little milk and creamer, was enough different flavors that I could work out the coffee flavor and savor it. Now I have ditched the cocoa powder and salt, and find myself sitting at around 4 parts coffee to 1 part creamer, sometimes less if it's a rich creamer (looking at you, my delicious 'sweet Italian cream').
But we recently moved cross-country, and the abandonment of normalcy and routine have been... well, not good. I've been making poor food decisions, poor exercise decisions, sleeping late, staying up late, and generally having trouble staying motivated. Undoubtedly, the difficulty finding a job is part of it. The frustration of constantly applying but never being hired is soul-numbing. But I've decided that, though I cannot make people hire me, I can certainly make myself exercise, make myself eat better, and in general live my life more disciplined, so that's what I'm trying to do.
Cue this morning, typing everything I ate into a fitness/nutrition tracker:
"Ok, so for breakfast I had... 2... slices... white... toast.........1 ... egg........jumbo............. 2 slices.....deli ham.............1 slice... muenster... cheese........."
I stopped and had a sip of coffee, which reminded me:
"2 cups..... coffee....black..... Oh cool, only 10 calories, that's neat. And...... french vanilla creamer....... hmmm, what, about a quarter cup? I need to measure tomorrow, but that'll work for now. Ok, 1 quarter.... cup...... 160 CALORIES!!!!!!!"
I looked guiltily at the cup before I had another sip. That tall cup of coffee was almost half the calories of my breakfast sandwich!
And then it hit me, how much like life that is. Here I am, taking great pride in myself for this added discipline in my life, when I'm secretly adding hundreds of calories back into it! And how true that is of life in general, is it not? We take something that, alone, is not bad for us, and color it with comfort or ease to make it "just a little more palatable", simultaneously sabotaging the very 'goodness' of the thing.
And how like pride that is, as well. We take a merciful act and pollute it with pride, patting ourselves on the back and saying, "everyone surely saw how generous I was to that busker". Or we take something loving and twist it into self-gratification. "I've done all the dishes for three days now. I'm such a great husband." Or we take something that ought to be a given and make ourselves out to be some kind of demi-god. "Man, I've been so generous letting people merge in front of me today. I am so awesome!"
Or any one of a thousand other little trivialities that we flavor with enough pride to massage our egos, at the same time torpedoing the entire value of the exercise. It reminded me of one of the Pauline Epistles, where he points out that all of our righteousness is basically filthy rags. I heard somewhere once that the rags Paul was referencing were the rags ancient women wore during their menstrual cycle. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but the image is certainly striking. We're sitting there, so proud of our 'good deed', but in reality is actually terribly unpleasant.
And I think that's Paul's point. Even when we are trying to do the right thing, we're catastrophically inept at doing it for the right reason. We're motivated by a desire to look good and be noticed. Or, barring that, we're doing it for the warm-fuzzy feelings we get for being a good person. Our intentions are thoroughly corrupted by pride, and the value of the good deed is entirely lost in a pride-powered, french-vanilla flavored, swirl of shameful self-aggrandizement.
This, then, is the mercy of Christ: that He looks at our weakness, covers it with his strength, and presents us to the Father. He takes our disgusting and polluted attempts at goodness and, washing them in His wholly-selfless and sacrificial goodness, presents them as fitting offerings to God. He stands beside us as the Accuser names failure after failure, sin after sin, and, as the prosecution rests, presents His own certificate of death, and proclaims to the Judge "See, the price of these sins is already paid."
I'm incapable of drinking my coffee without adding something to make it taste better to me, but Christ, in His mercy, forgives and covers my fault, be it even so pervasive as cream-laden coffee.
