A Lesson On Patience: Waiting For The Tea To Cool
I’ve been thinking a lot about how there is a proper time for everything under the Heavens. There’s even a proper time to sip your tea.
Do you drink tea or coffee? If the answer is yes, I’m sure you enjoy whichever it is that you drink. I’m a tea girl myself. While you may love your cup of coffee or tea, you know that sipping it too soon will cause your tongue to burn. The burning of your mouth, inevitably makes you put down your drink for a little bit, and wait till it’s the proper time to drink it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how there is a proper time for everything under the Heavens. There’s even a proper time to sip your tea.
A lot of the time when we want something, we want it right now. Waiting is a pain, which is why we take that first “too-soon” sip of coffee or tea. We want what we want when we want it. But if we receive something too soon, and it’s not the appointed time for it, we may just get ourselves burned. Ouch.
Have you ever “tasted the tea too soon” aka jumped the gun? Whatever the situation is in which you’ve rushed something, I’m sure you suffered some burns from it. Maybe the burns were minor, or maybe at a worse degree; but nonetheless we’ve all experienced situations in which our version of “right now” turned out to be “not right now.”
A good lesson on patience : Sitting and waiting for your coffee or tea to cool.
Do you know that America is known for being more “fast-paced” than other countries? Do you know that in Europe “Iced Coffee” isn’t a thing? There may be an interesting correlation here. I prefer Iced Tea myself, but do me a favor and put aside taste preferences, and read between the lines with me here.
I saw a video of an American woman saying that she was in Europe and was walking around at a farmers market. The woman working looked at her and said “You’re American, huh?” The woman was puzzled by why the lady assumed that she was an American when she hadn’t spoken a word to her; so she asked her. The woman working at the farmer’s market replied, “I knew you were American because you have coffee in a to-go cup. In Europe, we have coffee to stay.”
This story paints a perfect picture of the fast-paced culture we live in. Always taking coffee “to-go” and having it “iced” our society seldom slows down to sit, savor, and let our drinks cool down naturally. While this may seem like a seemingly unimportant thing, it reveals a lot about the busy lifestyle that many people are currently leading. If our society doesn’t even have time to sit and wait for our drinks to cool, are people even making time for God? Is our grab-and-go lifestyle spilling over into our relationship with The Lord? Take what we can quickly, and go. Never to sit down and give thanks, never to relish in a quiet intimate moment, never kneeling in sweet prayer.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my relationship with The Lord, or anybody for that matter of fact to be “grab-and-go.” I want to sit and savor the moment given to me, conversing while the tea cools down.
“But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.” - Romans 8:25
Serviam
August 24th is the Feast Day of Saint Bartholomew.
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