I was drinking my coffee this morning and something struck me. I have this coffee cup that I went out of my way to purchase. I bought it because I like the graphic that was on it. But there’s one thing that always bothered me about this coffee cup; as a right-handed person, the graphic is always facing away from when I pick up the coffee to take a sip.
I mean, I bought the cup because I liked the graphic on it so why in the world would it be facing away from me? It seemed counterintuitive. The only reasonable explanation would be that it was made for left-handed people. I suppose I could pick the coffee mug up with my left hand. But that just feels awkward. Why would somebody make a coffee mug only left handed people. No offense to you lefties but you’re only 10% of the population. That just seems like a poor business model.
But then the realization hit. Maybe I was looking at it all wrong. Maybe it was supposed to be on the outside. Maybe that graphic should be viewed as an advertisement to those around me. Maybe it doesn’t matter what I see on it and I should be more concerned with what others see me holding.
At least for me, this is often how I walk through life. I can’t speak to what it was like hundreds of years ago but the culture around us is so focused on building up yourself that it’s sometimes difficult to not automatically think about how this effects ME. When you dig a little deeper there is some effort to get away from this in the business world. Healthy businesses are usually focused on how things effect the brand, and not the individual, but we still need to constantly remind ourselves that we’re not doing even that because we work for the brand and if the brand looks bad then we look bad and if the brand suffers then we suffer.
This whole situation reminds me of the struggle that I often have in my spiritual development. I want to learn more and more about the things of God, and I want to devour every piece of truth I come across. I want to discipline myself to act in a way that is pleasing to the Father. I want to perfect my words and my deeds so that I’m living in a way that best models Jesus.
But…
If I do all of that because I want to make myself better, and not because there are hurting people around me who I could be helping, then all of that knowledge, all of that existential stuff, is completely pointless.
In Matthew 5:14 Jesus tells us that we are the light of the world and that nobody lights a lamp just to hide it and not let it shine out into the darkness. What good is being the light, if we hide it from those who need it most? If you fill yourself with all the head knowledge, but you don’t put it into practice, what does it matter. 1 Corinthians 13 speaks to this when it talks about having all kinds of different things – even spiritual gifts – but not have love. And it’s like you have nothing.
So often we do things, even things that we try to convince ourselves and others are for good, for the wrong reasons. This isn’t to say that there aren’t people out there doing things for the right reasons, I just know that I, myself, have to constantly check myself and look at my true motivations for doing things.
If we read a couple verses further in Matthew 5 (verse 16) we see the true reason we’re doing our good works. It has nothing to do with us as individuals. It has nothing to do with learning all the head knowledge we can learn. We are to let our lights shine out to those around us so that our works will show the love and true nature of the Father. Just as Jesus was acting as God would act so that we could have an example of how to act, we are to act as Jesus would act as He is our perfect example. Jesus said to Philip in John 14:9 that if you have seen Him, you have seen the Father. While we are not God (or gods, even) and we may struggle from time to time, our goal should be to mirror the acts of our Messiah. How often can you say to someone, “if you’ve been paying attention to what I’ve been doing, you’ve seen the Father acting through me.”
After having said that I feel that I need to reiterate that I’m not saying that we are supposed to become God, or gods. But we are supposed to act after the example of Jesus, who is the light of the world (John 8:12). And we also are supposed to be a light to the world, if not the light, as the verse says. So we are supposed to be Jesus to the world, just as Jesus was showing the Father through His actions.
It’s a big ask, and I fail at it way more than I should, but my goal is to keep trying. My goal is to never injure God’s ‘brand’. And when I do injure God’s brand, I’m happy that He doesn’t fire me. But I shouldn’t be ok with injuring God’s brand just because I know that He won’t fire me. If anything, I should want to represent His brand even better because I know that sometimes I deserved to be fired, and He showed me mercy and grace.
So what about that coffee cup? Maybe I should be fine with letting those around me see that graphic I was so happy about. Maybe from now on I’ll think more about what I’m showing than what I’m seeing. And, in doing so, maybe I can be a good advertisement for what the Father represents.
This was originally posted at my personal blog site linked below.
http://thepoiema.blogspot.com/2017/09/not-just-cup-of-coffee.html