Daily Devotion - Tuesday, April 19, 2016

This week the daily devotions will be coming in a little later than usual!  I am attending a preaching workshop in Colorado for continuing education, and am two hours behind my EST time zone!  

I drank hotel room coffee today.  I woke up too early for the freshly brewed coffee in the hotel lobby, so I had to resort to making it myself in the tiny coffee maker in my room.  

It wasn't as terrible as I suspected, though. 

It was worse.  

To begin with, it was weak--so weak, in fact, that I could see to the bottom of my cup.  For those of you non-coffee drinking types, when your coffee cup is full, and you can see to the bottom of it, it's not good.  Further, it tasted like the coffee had been sitting in a warehouse since the mid-1950's.  

I have to say that my hotel room coffee this morning ranks up there with some of the worst cups of coffee I've ever had--including a pretty terrible cup of airplane coffee on a German airline once.  

It's like the hotel isn't even trying.  They have to know that the coffee they are serving in their rooms is not only substandard, it's basically a crime against humanity.  And it doesn't have to be that way.  I have stayed in hotels where the coffee you could brew in your room was as good or better than the coffee they brewed in the lobby.  

The fact of the matter is, this hotel chain made a choice to serve horrible coffee and then try to pass it off as an "amenity."  That's how it was listed on the description of my room, anyway.  An amenity. 

I have come to understand that the culture within which we live, works that way when it comes to it's promises of a full and happy life.  The culture around us promises a great deal only if you sign on to a few unspoken propositions...  

First, you'll have to buy whatever our culture is selling.  Second, even though you, and everyone around you might know that whatever it's selling is garbage, you'll talk about it as though it's the greatest thing you've ever experienced.  Third, you'll have to seriously lower your expectations, or else you'll spend your whole life being disappointed. 

The Resurrection life doesn't work that way.  When you embrace a life following the risen Jesus, the promises that you are given aren't barely propped facades--they are the real thing.  Promises of joy, eternal life now and forever, hope and peace... these are the amenities of living a Resurrection life.  The culture around you can't even come close. 

Jesus told his disciples once: 

27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid. - John 14:27

You don't have to spend your life drinking hotel room coffee and trying to imagine that it's something that it isn't.  Jesus was raised to new life in order to raise you and me and all of Creation with him.  It's time wake up and smell the really good coffee, brothers and sisters!  

May you choose to embrace a Resurrection life today, and refuse to settle for the false promises of the culture around you.  May you decide today to live a full, abundant, purposeful, hopeful and peace-filled life, free from fear, free from false security and from all the ways the world would drag you down.  And may the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you now and always.  Amen.