A Fresh-Brewed Life

I'm reading a new book! Okay, it's not so new. In fact, it was published in 1999, but it's new to me! It's called Fresh-Brewed Life (A stirring invitation to wake up your soul) by Nicole Johnson. I actually purchased it at a friend's garage sale, and was drawn to the steaming coffee cup on the cover!

I'm still a fairly new coffee drinker, having only been drinking the stuff for maybe 2 years now. Some days I still taste it and go, "AAAAACK! Why do I drink this stuff??" Some days I wrap my hands around my mug, hunker down in my chair and let it soothe me with it's creamy vanilla-ness.

So this book is a big metaphor, one of them being that we are the coffee beans, life is the grinder, and God is the water. I'm kind of a sucker for neat metaphors, so this one has my full attention. It's funny too that some days my coffee is perfect, and some days it's toilet water, just like life at times.

One of the points that "woke me up" in Chapter one, Surrender to God, was that "Christian life is not about trying harder. It is not about keeping it all together. It is about trusting in the One who can keep it all together." And yet another point reminds me that we are loved, for reasons we don't even know, but we don't have to DO anything to be loved. If God loved us because we were smart, then we'd be trying too hard to be smarter. If he loved us because we were beautiful, we'd be trying too hard to be pretty. Nope. He just loves us. And we don't know why. Isn't that a kick?

Well, sometimes coffee can be a kick too. I'm still not 100% in love with Juan Valdez, but I'm really liking this book!