As editor of our parish bulletin, I get the chance to see all the goodies as they’re going in (and, of course, I read the entire thing!). This summer, rather than cut a couple of pages from our bulletin, as we have in past summers due to lack of activities and such in the parish and the area, I have been filling in with other content. As I was typing this reflection in (which I received as a clipping from a newsletter our deacon gets and wanted to share), I thought of how relevant it is to my recent mental grumblings. And it made me want a cuppa coffee. You?

God’s Coffee: A Reflection
A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor. Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups—porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain-looking, some expensive, some exquisite—telling them to help themselves to the coffee.
When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice-looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones. While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee. In most cases, it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink.

“What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups, and then you began eyeing each other’s cups. Now consider this: life is the coffee; the jobs, money and position in society are the cups. They are just tools to hold and contain Life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change, the quality of Life we live.

“Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us.”