When you get used to something that, for you, is the best, it is hard to settle for less. For the past years I have been enjoying the taste and experience of brewing coffee fresh from the bean. At first I would buy fresh ground local barako coffee from the market, and then brew it. Until a friend of mine who was a coffee enthusiast told me about brewing from newly ground coffee. This friend also blessed me with a grinder. Ever since then I have been buying coffee beans, and grinding only exactly what I would be brewing for one mug.
Aside from that I also buy the kind of coffee blend that I enjoy. A friend of mine sells coffee beans that he imports from the Mountain Province - Benguet, Sagada, Kalinga Apayao and other places. He has more or less a dozen coffee bean blends to choose from! After experimenting with almost all I found the blend that I enjoy - the Kalinga Dark Roast. It's Robusta, from Kalinga Apayao. For me...the best.
I don't buy any other blend. I don't drink any other coffee except newly ground coffee (except maybe when it is brownout, and I have no choice but to drink 3-in-1!)
In a recent meeting I was in, we were also served brewed coffee. But nothing beats the personal choice of coffee beans that I buy. In the apartment where we stayed the owners made sure that we had coffee - instant coffee. Out of habit every morning I would prepare myself a cup of instant coffee, but I wouldn't finish it. I would just wait for our meeting to start so I could enjoy brewed coffee. But that wouldn't fully satisfy. For the meantime, yes. But I still longed for my personal choice - freshly ground Kalinga Dark Roast in a mug. Every morning. The best...for me.
O taste and see that the LORD is good; How blessed is the man who takes refuge in Him!
(Psalms 34:8)
Have we had a taste of who our God is, of who the God of the Bible is, to the point that nothing else, and no one else can take His place in our heart?
Sadly, today, people settle for a 3-in-1 God, a generic God, and do not go out and really taste and see His goodness.
Everyone knows the line "God is good all the time, and all the time God is good", but do we really know this in our life? Have we tasted that He really is good?
Just like for coffee lovers like me, God wants us to have a taste of who He is, and realize that there is no one or anything, that can beat Him.
The difference between God and coffee is that, unlike coffee, God does not have different blends. He is who He is. And He has revealed Himself through His word, the Bible.
And it is when we respond to this revelation of God that we begin to taste and see who He is!
When we realize who He is - our Creator, and yet how many of us realize that we have rebelled against Him, that we do not live according to how He originally designed us to be - like Him.
And even more, how many of us know that He has graciously provided a way of escape from this enmity we have with Him, by sending His Son to die for us. This was the initial expression of God's love for us - by sending us a Savior.
And through His Son we are forgiven, redeemed from sin and adopted as His children - even as we put our faith in Him, in who He is.
When we realize that a God like this would show His love in this way, even while we were still sinners Christ died for us - when we have tasted of this love, there will be nothing and no one else who will be able to satisfy us as He did.
He is the perfect blend, the only blend, that will really satisfy our soul.
How I pray that we will all have a taste of the grace and mercy of our God, and that through this taste may realize that nothing else can replace Him, that He truly is good. It begins with our salvation, but continues on in our everyday life.
What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?
(Romans 8:31-32)
And yet even "all things" will never replace the love of God that He showed us when He did not spare His own son to die for our sins and deliver us from sin.
Is God the "perfect blend" in your life? I pray that, as you seek Him, you will realize this too.
