Most of us enjoy a hot cup of coffee each morning. Some of us really enjoy the coffee and others are hopelessly enslaved to the jolt it provides. Wherever you find yourself coffee drinker, this post is for you. It’s for us.

Whether you eat or drink…
I wake up and start my french press. I boil the water, grind the beans, and wait anxiously for those 4 and a half minutes to pass until I can enjoy the near perfect morning cup.

As a Christian who is trying to do all things to the glory of God (1 Cor 10.31), even eating or drinking, this is an exercise in worship. I praise God for being the good creator who gives such gifts for us to enjoy. We see something of his creative kindness to us in making coffee beans. We also see that he knows our frames are weak.

Our Lives are vapors
But further, I find myself captivated by the steam. I am eagerly awaiting this cup. It is steaming hot. I add my cream and sugar and hold this hot drink in my hands. But I am captivated by the steam as it continues off my little caffeinated smokestack. I am reminded again of the Scripture:

Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away. (Jam 4.14–NASB)

My life is a vapor. It is a blip on the screen. I am here for a little while and then I vanish away.

Surely the problems and hardships of the day ahead and the days behind are not interpreted in light of this. In my mind every day is like a thousand years; I am living forever. But this is simply not true. My life is a vapor and my coffee reminds me of what the Scriptures shout to me.

You should see here how my second observation (my life is a vapor) helps with my first (do all to the glory of God). In light of the fact that life is short I don’t have time to jack around being stupid, immature and selfish. Instead, I need to grow up, serve Jesus and have fun. I only have so many rocks to throw into the pond to make a splash for his kingdom, so it’s time to put the mirror of self-admiration down and get to chucking.

The gospel beckons me to hear the Scripture. God numbers my days so I should number my days. Because Christ lived and died for me I need (get) to, today, live for him.

So, don’t waste your coffee. Drink, worship, live & enjoy!

That may be the best title for a blog post in the history of this website!

We have been talking a lot about the holiness of Jesus on Sunday mornings. RC Sproul wrote a book that has become something of a classic in our age. I think he is helpful in light of our recent study.

In his book The Holiness of God  Sproul combines transcendent theology with passion and delivers it in a clear, lucid manner that is engaging to the soul.

“To be undone means to come apart at the seams, to be unraveled…. [It is] personal disintegration…. [Isaiah] was considered by his contemporaries as the most righteous man in the nation. He was respected as a paragon of virtue. Then he caught one sudden glimpse of the holy God. In that single moment, all of his self-esteem was shattered. In a brief second he was exposed, made naked beneath a gaze of the absolute standard of holiness. As long as Isaiah could compare himself to other mortals, he was able to maintain a lofty opinion of his own character. The instant he measured himself by the ultimate standard, he was destroyed—morally and spiritually annihilated. He was undone. He came apart.His sense of integrity collapsed.”

“There is a special kind of phobia from which we all suffer. It is called xenophobia.Xenophobia is a fear (and sometimes hatred) of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign. God is the ultimate object of our xenophobia.He is the ultimate stranger. He is the ultimate foreigner. He is holy, and we are not.”

This is just great stuff. And it serves as a timely tonic for our current age that seems to have chiseled a God who looks and acts more like our little buddy than the transcendently enthroned King of kings. Mark keeps on making us ask and answer the question of "Who is this man?!" The answer is, he is Jesus, the holy one! And when we see this, we too, are undone!