Weekday Devotion With Pastor Chris

Sometime between 1732 and 1735 Johann Sebastian Bach, who was serving as cantor of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, composed his “Coffee Cantata”.  In it, a young woman pleads with her disapproving father to accept her devotion to drinking this newfangled concoction.  At one point she pleads (translated),

Oh! How sweet coffee does taste,

Better than a thousand kisses,

Milder than muscat wine.

Coffee, coffee, I've got to have it,

And if someone wants to perk me up,

Oh, just give me a cup of coffee!
 

     Coffee lovers understand her yearning.  For them, there is nothing quite like that first cup of freshly brewed coffee in the morning.  I can almost smell it.

     Many believe that coffee traces its origins back to coffee forests on the Ethiopian plateau.  One legend has it that it was discovered by a goat herder named Kaldi who noticed that his goats became unusually energetic after eating the berries.  The story goes that he shared his observations with the abbot of a local monastery who then proceeded to make a drink from the berries and found it kept him alert through the long hours of evening prayer.

     Whatever its origins, it was on the Arabian Peninsula during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that coffee began to be cultivated and traded.  By the seventeenth century it had made its way to Europe where some greeted it (big surprise) with suspicion and fear.  They called it the “bitter invention of Satan.”  After tasting it, however, Pope Clement VIII is said to have declared, "This Satan's drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it."

     It was the Dutch who acquired seedlings and went on to successfully cultivate plants in Batavia, Indonesia, Sumatra and Celebes.  The French acquired a coffee plant in 1714 (a gift to the King from the Mayor of Amsterdam), and nine years later a young naval officer took a seedling from that plant and transported it to Martinique where it thrived.  That one seedling is credited with not only leading to over 18 million coffee trees on Martinique, but also becoming the parent of all coffee trees throughout the Caribbean, South and Central America.  According to politifact.com, coffee is second only to crude oil as the most popular commodity in the world.

     Thomas Jefferson once called coffee “the favorite drink of the civilized world.”  The truth, however, is that many still prefer their tea or even some other caffeine-saturated drink like Coca-Cola.

     The one drink that truly refreshes?  Ultimately, nothing can compare with that which is offered by our living Lord: “Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty.  The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (Jn. 4:14).   What better way to start your day than to spend some time with him (maybe with a cup of coffee nearby)?

 “O taste and see that the Lord is good; happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps. 34:8).

- Pastor Chris