Spilt Coffee

I was holding a cup of coffee in the hallway at school the other day as I greeted my kiddos. A sweet girl walked up behind me and bumped my arm and my cup jostled, spilling coffee onto the floor. She looked upset and started to apologize, when I assured her that it was not a big deal - we could easily clean up the mess with a few paper towels.


Perhaps just to remind me of God's timing and control, this event reminded me of an analogy I had seen only an hour or two earlier in the morning .... Why did coffee spill when the girl bumped my arm? Because she bumped me, you say? You're only partly right. 
When I was bumped, coffee spilled because I had coffee in my cup. Had I been drinking water instead, water would have been what spilled on the floor. 

Just like a cup spills if bumped, in the moments when we get jostled (both literally and figuratively) things come spilling out of us as well. It's easy enough for us to appear one way to the world when things are going easily ... but when life bumps and jostles you (and I assure you, it will), whatever is inside you is sure to be the same thing that spills out. Will it be anger ... hate ... frustration? Or goodness ... kindness .... love?

Only if we are *truly* filled with Godly things will godliness be what spills out of us.

2 Peter 1:5-11 tells us "But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." and Philipians 4:8 reminds us "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things."

As we go through our lives - both the easy moments and the challenging - let us study and pray and dwell on Godly things so that even when life's tumultuous moments shake us, all the right things can come spilling out.