I recently had one of my sons come for a visit. He is keen to make sure I take some exercise and so takes me on long, rambling walks all over Bath. I think in his mind it is a bit like exercising a lazy elderly dog.
Anyway, back to the story - I quickly realised that these walks were not seemingly random routes but rather had a purpose. The purpose? To punctuate the walk with visits to a variety of coffee shops.
I must confess that I am not really a coffee aficionado and my coffee drinking tends to be a tame black decaf with half a spoonful of sugar.
My son on the other hand will not touch instant. It should be ‘proper’ coffee. It should come as beans, be ground, filtered and processed via a variety of expensive and complicated machines.
The coffee shops all over Bath that we visited do indeed follow these processes. In fairness the coffee I tasted in these emporiums was vastly superior to my sad instant decaf.
Which brings me to the point - we live in an age where we want things instantly. Now! Fast food. Instant coffee. Note - ‘fast and instant ‘ but not necessarily ‘good’.
Certainly it appears that with coffee ‘instant’ does not translate into ‘good’, whereas ‘real’ coffee (percolated?) is ‘slow’ coffee is ‘good’ coffee.
There is perhaps a life message in the midst of this for there is a danger in our society to want, and to demand, instant results. That does not mean that the results are good.
Possibly we need to slow down. Percolate even … take our time and get ‘good’ results … ‘good outcomes’.
In other words we need to meditate and ruminate.
Psalm One, verse two says:
“(they) delight in the word of God, and on his word they meditate day and night”.
In other words take time to reflect on life and life decisions so that the outcomes are not ‘instant’ but are ‘good’.
Enjoy your coffee break!
David
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