OK, I'm back. I know that you never realized I quit writing and got up from the table, but I did. I put the coffee mug in the fridge. Maybe in a few paragraphs I'll be able to drink it. Why is this happening to me? Why am I making hot coffee in the morning and having to wait? It's not like this is my second pot, which does happen from time to time. It's happening because last night I felt lazy. As I went out to do my evening prayers and meditations, to read over some of the study for tonight's sermon and smoke my last pipe of the day, the thought occurred that I needed to make a pot of coffee. But I didn't feel like it. I have a two liter of Mt. Dew. I decided to just drink that in the/this morning and save my coffee, which I'm almost out of. No, that's a lie. I'm not sure why I wrote it, but I'm leaving it instead of correcting through deletion. I did decide to just drink the Mt. Dew, but it had nothing to do with almost being out of coffee. In truth I almost forgot how low I am until I opened the container this morning.
The truth is what I said earlier. I was lazy. Period. The end. I didn't feel like doing it. I had another source of caffeine. So, I didn't make it. But as I wrote this morning and my mind worked on words and memory flashed with the truth that I have a couple of pots of coffee left before disaster strikes if I don't buy more, my mind put on its Pollyanna mask and tried to pretty up the truth. Make my laziness good. Well, it is actually good that I tried to substitute Mt Dew for my morning coffee since I'm almost out. Suddenly, I'm writing that idea as though it occurred to me last night and there was a good purpose in my putting off making coffee. That's how quick and easy it can be to play loose with the truth, even to ourselves. I wasn't saving coffee or trying to. But I said I was because that would have been a good reason to not make coffee last night....one that I would have totally negated by making a pot this morning.
Perhaps you think me foolish? Don't worry. I won't be offended. I probably will never even know, but for the record I sometimes think myself foolish as I go on and on and ramble and rant about mundane, meaningless things. But this isn't mundane or meaningless. It's huge. No, not the coffee story. that's just what got us here. It's a theme driving device. The lie that slipped in and that I didn't catch until after I hit the period at the end just helped emphasize the point to me, which I will try to get to for you, Dear Reader, before you give up on the Moment.
I am not unique. OK, I'm unique in that there is no one exactly like me, but I am not terminally unique, not that unique. This coffee chronicle is meaningless and unimportant on the surface. It's not a big deal. No one cares why I didn't make coffee last night. No one cares that I decided the Mt Dew wasn't cutting it and that I needed some aroma therapy this morning (best aroma therapy is brewing coffee), so I made a pot. No one would even be upset with me or judge me for deciding I didn't feel like making coffee and skipping it. So why did I try to clean up the motivation of the story? I went from being honest about being lazy to lying about trying to save coffee in less than a paragraph, in like three sentences! And I did it without thinking about it, without even noticing at first. I simply let the words flow and the fingers type and I wrote that I decided to drink the Dew this morning (total truth) and save what was left of my coffee (not a bit of truth). One sentence. The transition from truth to manipulation in one sentence. Yes, I was lazy, but it wasn't all bad because there was a good reason to be lazy. I needed to save coffee because I'm almost out. Lies. Lies. White, purple, pink or black, I don't care the color we paint it, falsehood is falsehood.
But we try so hard to cover up our stink. Get a little sweaty during the day and need to do something but don't have time for a shower? We put on some deodorant and maybe a spritz of cologne or perfume and some clean clothes and hope for the best. Cover, mask, camouflage. We flush our waste and use exhaust fans in the bathrooms. And we sprinkle lies, subtle twists, exaggerations and omissions on the truths, the hows and whys and sometimes even the whens and wheres of our story to try make the who of our main character, which would be us, look good or at least not as bad,.
We try to work our story around to good, or at least a good tale, by changing the words, by altering, masking and tweaking the truth. If it's so easy to do on something as non-critical and non-character defining as making a pot of coffee, how hard we must look at the truth to keep from autocorrecting our story with the big things, the motivations behind why I did what I did that hurt you, the horror I went through that I am now trying to use as excuse to be selfish and self centered and make myself the star as the victim of my own movie so I can excuse trying to victimize or villainize you, the where and when and why and how and who I was thinking about when I did that unloving, selfish thing that I wish I hadn't done. The truth about why I did such and such act of love (to look good rather than to be of service). We naturally tend to omit and exaggerate and twist with implications to try to make our bad story good and our good story great. And that's before the outright straight up whoppers that can't even be minimized with nice words like twist and tweak. Did you see the victim on the night of her murder? No. Yes, you did! We traced the money she had on her right to the photo of you at the ATM that same day! Now it doesn't matter that you didn't kill her. You're arrested for murder because you thought it looked bad that you saw her at all and tried to clean up truth (thank you NCIS for that illustrative idea).
But you can't clean up truth. You can't dirty it either. It just is. And God is the One who works our past into something that is good, good for us and good for His glory. Not us. And He doesn't do it by changing the facts, using a cosmic delete key. He makes good things better. He makes bad things better, better even than our good things. He makes all things work in our lives to become and or do something amazing and good in us that brings us closer and deeper into relationship with Him and reflects His glory (demonstrates who He is, His love, His power and His mercy). That means even when bad things happen, even we choose and cause bad things to happen, He uses it for and the end result can be good. That doesn't mean that all things are good or that He causes the bad things. That means the bad things don't triumph, aren't the end of the story, if we run to Him rather than away from Him.
Yes, some things are always going to hurt on this side of eternity. Some things may never make sense. Some things in our past are always going to be ugly, and perhaps even embarrassing, and definitely held against us by those who would choose self righteous judgment over mercy and grace. Some things in our story may always have the aroma of sorrow and the flavor of pain. The question is what are the after notes of what we've tasted? Is the sorrow and pain followed by fruity notes of love, joy, peace, longsuffering, mercy, and more or rather the acrid notes of bitterness, resentment, misery and hopelessness? The answer lies not in religion, not in doctrine, not in anything or anyone other than the God of all comfort, the One who loves enough to give, the one who can make even the worst things that ever happened, the loss of children, suicide attempts, drug overdoses, horrible abuses of trust and closeness done to others, living through being brutally beaten and raped, and even prison, even these sorts of things, who can cause all things to become things we longer feel the desperate need to shut the door on, to become just another fact of a past we no longer hide in shame and regret from, that have been used for good and to bring someone (in some cases more than one someone) closer to God, or at the very least no longer cause an increase in the distance between. I know, because these are all part of my story.
In some of those instances I acted truly evil. In some I was innocent. In some there was good and bad in my motivation and actions. I could shift blame, excuse and justify and edit the tale in each and every case to play the victim, to look better, to try to make them work for my good appearance or at least not as much for my bad. I could also have each of these expressed in such a way to make me and me alone seem the bad guy who deserved anything and all that happened. It was all my fault. None of it was my fault. And the truth is in between the two and doesn't change. God didn't call any of that good. He didn't make it all happen. But the person I am now and the relationship I have with Him is made up of those ingredients, and of course the rest of my past, good and bad, as well.
The plastic container that holds my coffee isn't necessarily good. The hot water that runs through it could burn me badly if I don't let it cool and isn't too nice a process for the beans, which have already been picked, chopped and ground to bits. Some bad stuff happened to the coffee beans that are in my mug, and none of it was good from the perspective of the bean. But the end result is something amazing and glorious and the transformation into a thing of wonder and sweet aroma. My life can be a sweet aroma to others and to the God who made me, and so can yours. The good and the bad work by His grace to make us into something we could never be on our own, a reflection o Him and His love. We simply need to turn to Him rather than away from Him, in the best of times and the worst of times and the times when we can't tell the two apart. We are the joy of God's morning. We don't need to lie, to embellish or omit to edit or enhance our story. He makes our past as precious as a cup of coffee.
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