Enjoy Life

Stop and smell the coffee
Take a sip, relax
Dont dwell on the uncertain,
Focus only on the facts

Close your eyes a moment
Take a bit to breath
Clear your mind a little
Then listen close to me

This world is crazy darling
With busyness galore
With jobs and friends and family
Want-tos, needs, and more

Sometimes we start to spiral
As the world spins all around
And the many pressures that we feel
Weigh our shoulders down.

We rush through days unseeing
Keeping our blinders on
And in attempt to block distractions
We find it's the good that's gone.

As we climb the ladders
Work to please everyone else
We forget to look around us
And take a minute for ourselves.

We hustle and we bustle
And we scarcely stop to breath
Or to help a neighbor
Or blow off a little steam

Sometimes we go until we find
We're over cooked, burnt out
Or worse, we explode because we're broken,
Left with only tears or shouts

So instead of pushing through this
What if you stop and take some time
To rest and wish and think and breath
Oh dear friend of mine?

Look around at beauty-
It surrounds you every day
Let it calm you and remind you
That there are better ways.

For rushing here and all around
Only gets us just so far
Sometimes a slow, more peaceful pace
Can get us to the stars.

If you'll pause to dream and wonder
And wander a bit more, too...
If you'll slow the pace your life has
And to yourself be a bit more true

Your heart will be more happy
You'll dance and laugh and sing
And oh, to those around you,
So much more joy you'll chance to bring.

So stop and smell the coffee,
Or the roses, or the like ...
And dare to breath a little
Remember to enjoy life.

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.