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The first sentence of this bestseller begins with a question. “Are you a carrot, an egg, or a coffee bean?” Not sure? Try the experiment. Boil a carrot and record what happens. Boil an egg and record the results. Finally, put a coffee bean in a boiling pot of water and see what happens. The carrot goes soft, the egg gets hard, and the bean makes coffee.
In life, we all choose how to respond to our environment. We can be like the carrot and find that we are weakened, or like the egg and be hardened by our environment. The coffee bean, however, transforms its environment. If we think like a carrot, we believe forces outside of us are more powerful than who we are on the inside and we will become weak. The same is true if we think like an egg. The negativity of the world hardens our hearts so that we too become negative. Like the coffee bean, we have the ability to transform our environment from the inside out.
As the question from page one was brewing inside of me, and the flight attendant filled my coffee cup for the second time, I realized how often I react to my surroundings and my environment. It’s easy to do and yet as a follower of Jesus, I’m not intended to carry the characteristics of the culture or the weight of the world on my back. I am not a reactor to circumstance. I am created to be a reflector of Christ. The one who transformed the cross from a symbol of death into new life; defeat into victory; despair into hope. He didn’t allow the hate of the day to sway his opinion or the popular vote to derail his mission. Instead, he stayed true to who he was, and though outwardly he was wasting away, inwardly he was being renewed day by day.
My hope and prayer for you and for the Church of God on Earth are that we would be agents of renewal and not simply reactors to our current set of circumstances. I pray fervently that we would be reflectors of God’s love and Christ’s life and that we would lead others to know the transformational power of His Holy Spirit. If we live, love, and lead as the coffee bean, (I really mean Jesus) fear of what is and what is to come has no hold on us. For when I am weak, He is strong. That goes for my cup of coffee too!
God Bless you this day with the words from St. Paul, 2 Corinthians 4:16 and 18: “Therefore do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” Amen.
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