a lesson from flavored coffee
Posted by nathandiehl on 04 Nov 2006 | Tagged as: thoughts on life.
this past week, my wife and i were at the grocery, and needed to pick up some more coffee beans. now, you have to understand…my wife and i are fairly serious coffee drinkers–not that we drink pots a day, but we know our coffee…
we normally buy a french roast or another medium roast. we haven’t ever been a fan of a breakfast coffee–to light for our taste. so we saw a new packaging of beans from folgers–and we stood there in the aisle discussing for about two minutes what we thought about purchasing folgers beans. we’ve never had real good luck with folgers in the past, we we’re awfully picky about what makes a ‘good’ coffee.
but i think i convinced my wife that it getting a new vanilla coffee beans would be great, because when i first started drinking coffee seriously three years ago or so, i used to drink flavored coffee all the time. so, we purchased the vanilla beans, and in a few days opened up the bag.
yeah…the coffee isn’t what i thought it would be. not only is it weak coffee flavor, but it also smells up the whole house with a pretty distinctive odor. not that the odor is bad…it’s just odd.
when i first started to drink coffee, i didn’t mind–and actually enjoyed–the weak coffee. but now that i’ve spent the last three years drinking coffee, i no longer need weak coffee. in fact, when i drink weak coffee, it is almost as if i’m not drinking actual coffee. it does nothing for me. why do i not have the same enjoyment from vanilla flavored coffee as i did back then? why doesn’t it do the same thing for me any more?
i would suggest the answer is very similar to our God-experiences. when we’re baby Christians, we can have a certain great experience with God, and then as we continue to mature in our faith, that same experience may not be so powerful when experienced again. it’s not that God isn’t there, it’s just that our spirituality has increased to a place where we no longer need the same things we needed back when we first experienced them. what do you think?
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4 Comments »
on 04 Nov 2006 at 11:00 am 1.
Emily Diehl said …
I particularly don’t enjoy sweet smells in the morning…I think that’s why I didn’t enjoy the vanilla beans at first. Now that we’ve been drinking it for the past week or so (because I’m definitely not a fan of throwing things away…what a waste)…it’s not so bad…although I would prefer it bold and black. Good correllation between tastes in coffee and our spiritual growth. I found that very interesting and a good point.
on 04 Nov 2006 at 11:20 am 2.
joe said …
Ah, the paradox that is christianity.
As I grow, I find myself thinking like Paul did. “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” (1 Corinthians 13:11). The more I grow, the more my experiences with God should grow.
But, Jesus said to the church in Ephesus, “Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love.” (Revelation 2:4). He told them to repent and “do the things [they] did at first.” Somehow they lost sight of God, even though they were growing.
I don’t ever want to be caught in that trap.
Great post! It made me think about my own walk with God.
on 05 Nov 2006 at 6:48 am 3.place of nathan. » lessons from flavored coffee, part ii. said …
[...] Posted by nathandiehl on 05 Nov 2006 at 06:48 am | Tagged as: thoughts on life. (Note: This is a continued thought from part i. please read previous day’s entry before continuing.) [...]
on 06 Nov 2006 at 4:00 pm 4.
Todd Helmkamp said …
Joe, that’s one of my life-verses. Good analogy, Mr. Diehl. Everytime I drink coffee that doesn’t come from the machine here at work (it contains caffeine; that’s about the only positive thing you can say about it), I think about how you and Joe got me started, really started, on good coffee, and how influential you both were (are!!!!!) in my Christian life. I owe you guys a lot. By the way, you should check out gevalia.com. That’s my poison.