This week I came face to face with a genuine dilemma. I had several meetings in town and for some reason I miscalculated and ended up with a two and a half hour gap between meetings. I hate wasting time but if I were to go back to my office I would simply have to return to my meeting later and with the cost of gas these days one cannot be too cautious.
You know gas is going up when it costs more to fill the car than the car is actually worth. The most valuable thing in my car is in my gas tank.
I fixed the situation by stopping at a small coffee shop for a cup of Joe. As far as I’m concerned, there’s no bad time to have a cup of coffee, despite the price. I ordered my coffee and when the waitress brought it, I started thinking about coffee. Why did God give us coffee?
Then my mind went back to my grandfather, whose greatest gift to me was the love of coffee. Nobody liked coffee more. I remember one of his favorite quotes: “You can always tell a man by the coffee he drinks.”
Anathema to my grandfather was the idea of instant coffee. No man, in his opinion, would ever drink such a thing. “If a man drank instant coffee,” my grandfather said, “you don’t know what else he would do. Never trust a man who drinks instant coffee.”
Making coffee was an art form for my grandfather. There was a right way and a wrong way to make coffee, and he always insisted on the right way. Of course, the right way was his way.
In the grandfather’s kitchen there was an old wood stove. My grandmother cooked meals in this ancient appliance for over 50 years. In this old stove, my grandfather elaborated the famous mud broth of it. She never allowed my grandmother to make the concoction; it was her job, which she took seriously.
Once, for his birthday, we all pitched in and bought him an electric coffee pot. I had never seen my grandfather so angry. When he saw what it was, he didn’t even take it out of the box.
He had strong ideas about coffee and how it should be made, and woe to the person who contradicted his ideas!
Grandpa always kept a fire going in the old wood stove and in the back of the stove he kept his coffee pot, a big 2 gallon pot, one of those old fashioned coffee pots that went out of style a long time ago. The coffee was always on, and no matter when you stopped to check it out, he always had “fresh” coffee ready.
When I say “fresh”, I need to explain it. Actually the coffee was only fresh on Sunday. On Saturday night, she routinely emptied the coffeemaker and made fresh coffee for Sunday morning.
He had an old coffee grinder and ground the coffee beans on Saturday night. She put some other things in the coffee, I’ve never found out what. One thing I know he put in was a crushed eggshell. What he did to his coffee, I have no idea, but Grandpa was sure it was an important ingredient.
Freshly ground coffee beans were put in, the pot filled with fresh water, and placed on the back of the stove to slowly perk up. This coffee would last all week. The coffee was so strong on Sunday that if it didn’t wake you up in the morning, you were dead.
In fact, Cousin Ernie died on a Sunday afternoon, according to my grandfather, and a sip of his coffee only woke him up and he lived seven more years, which was unfortunate for Grandpa since he had to support him.
Before going to bed each night, my grandfather would take care of his coffee. He would grind up some freshly brewed coffee beans, sprinkle them over old coffee grounds, and then add a freshly crushed eggshell. Then he would refill the pot with water.
His coffee was filtered 24/7 and by Saturday it was so strong that he needed half a cup of sugar just to drink one cup. It was thick enough to use as a syrup on your pancakes, but so strong that it dissolved your pancakes before you could eat them.
My grandmother once tried to wash the coffee pot. When my grandfather saw it, he was furious: “Never wash that pot,” he blurted out, “you’ll ruin its character and a pot needs a lot of character to make good coffee.”
When my grandfather died, I looked at his old black coffee pot and discovered two things. One, the original color was blue. And two, even though it was originally a 2-gallon pot, it could only take three quarts of water. “Character,” so important to my grandfather, had developed so much over the years that his capacity had diminished.
As I reflected on my grandfather, I thought of my Heavenly Father and His gifts. The Bible says it this way; “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation, no shifting shadow” (James 1:17).
I really don’t know why God gave us coffee, but I do know that God’s character is such that He never diminishes His ability to bless me each day.
