My Cup Runneth Over

Getting up early for church this morning, I went into the kitchen to make coffee, although we planned to eat breakfast at church. I noticed Howard's coffee cup had already been used, probably because he gets up pre-dawn and brews a cup, has a snack
then goes back to bed.

I got a cup for me from the cupboard, and started to rinse out his cup. Then I thought I'd just fill it the way it was. An incident of long ago surfaced in my mind.

Our son, Trevor, had a job as a teenager at a local filling station where several locals hung around to visit, drink coffee, and solve all the world's problems. One morning as Trevor tidied up the station, his eyes fell on the row of coffee mugs lined up on a high shelf. He could see the stains around the edges and drips down the side of the cups, so he thought he would do the guys a favor by washing their cups.

Big mistake! When the loafers dropped in one by one, they noticed something different. "Who washed my cup?" the irate, good old boys demanded. Since Trevor didn't drink coffee at the time, he didn't realize how important an unwashed cup was! Apparently, they thought it made the coffee taste better. Thankfully, since the individuals recognized and used their own cups, it was their own germs on them and would not make them sick!

Jesus talks about dirty cups in a couple of places in the Bible. In Matthew 23:25, He tells the scribes and Pharisees, "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess."

And again in Luke 11:39, And the Lord said unto them, "Now do ye Pharisees make clean the outside of the cup and the platter; but your inward part is full of ravening and wickedness."

While washing a coffee cup or not may be a personal preference, for Christians, looking good on the outside is not as important as what we are inside! Fill my cup, Lord!