COFFEE RINGS: I have just two short devotional observations this morning. Both are – I believe – important reminders as we engage yet another new day as people who intend to live like we mean it.

First, as we finished breakfast and I walked Rebekah out to her car, I noticed my open Bible and coffee mug together on the kitchen counter. At breakfast, after completing our daily Upper Room devotion and prayer, we had been talking about the day’s schedule. Our conversation turned to something spiritual, and that led to looking up a passage in Second Samuel – hence the open Bible.

The coffee mug sitting on the open page reminds me of how natural it is for us to talk about faith, to dig into God’s word, and to encourage one another as followers of Jesus. Some of you may be horrified at the thought of coffee rings on the word; but I’m thinking quite the opposite – when I look at them together I see a level of intimacy and familiarity we badly need if we’re going to be the kind of disciples who make any kind of a difference in this broken world.

PASSAGES: Next is this scrap of paper from my mum’s Bible. Yesterday my dad found out that his cousin Roger – boyhood friend and best man – had passed away in England. So I took him a cup coffee and we talked.

We talked about life and death, and faith, and lack of faith, and we talked about the fact that even people who reject God often find unexpected meaning in face of mortality and transition. It’s as if the deeper truth about our essential nature as created beings is inescapably apparent, and God whispers hints of eternity, and latent spiritual sensitivity is closer to the surface than ever before.

So my mum went to her Bible and pulled out an old scrap of paper. My dad had apparently written the words down years and years ago, after he ran across them in a message or a book. I did some research, and the quote is attributed to Indian educator and Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941).

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp, because the dawn has come.”

It’s a new day, friends; the dawn comes every morning. Let’s live in the light, and let’s get coffee rings on the word. Then, one day when we do pass into eternity, we can simply continue this great adventure of faith.

– DEREK