Addicted to a dark roast liberty!

I have often been accused of being addicted to coffee. My friends, years ago, threatened to host a massive "intervention", inviting my family along, until they realised that genetics played a major role, my mother suffering from a similar affliction. She would more than likely have driven the get-away car directly to the nearest Starbucks to order me a grande vanilla skim cappuccino - intravenous STAT!

So, after years of being harranged, imagine my relief when I came across the following quote this morning at my favourite Granada coffee shop: "El Café es la bebída que incita a pensar. Y cuando un pueblo empieza a pensar, resulta peligroso para tiranos y los enimigos de la libertad" (W.H. VccKers). Roughly translated, it says, "Coffee is the drink that incites/inspires one to think. And when a village begins to think, it is dangerous for tyrants and the enemies of liberty".

Finally, after years of friends trying to tie me fast to that metaphorical wagon of non-caffeinated moderation, I have found my justification. My love of for an extra large cup of steaming black goodness in the morning (afternoon and evening) is no normal addition. Don't you see? It is an addiction to freedom and liberty, to the struggle against the tyrants of this world! So, I say, "Pour me another glass of that dark roasted liberty and let the tyrants fall!

Back to a comfortable and convenient world

What is it about coming back to the West that makes me feel like people are trying to organise and manage me into their boxes? What is it that makes me feel as if a large muffling pillow is being slowly lowered over my voice, like a screen is being pulled slowly across my heart so that they would be more palpable, more acceptable to our "civilised" world? Why is it that I feel that much more of a need to stand on a balcony somewhere and scream or beg, "Wake up! Arise! Break for a broken world!"? Why do I feel so alone in the crushing of my heart?

I don't understand a world that exists as if the poor are not our own flesh; as if "war" is not just a polite word for unconscionable suffering - for whole nations of widowed, orphaned, handicapped and traumatised people; as if each one of us do not have a choice!

We (Christians) are called to love, yet how often do we opt to interpret that love in its most comfortable and convenient way? What do we do with Christ's words: "This is my commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends." (John 15: 12-13)? How do we interpret God saying that his true fast, the fast that makes Him hear and answer, is to "give ourselves to the hungry and satisfy the desire of the afflicted"; "to let the oppressed go free And break every yoke" (Isaiah 58)? How do we make this convenient and comfortable?

So back again in this "civilised" Western world, I feel the pressure to squelch my cries and my confessions. I am sinner, perhaps more than the rest of this Western world, because I have seen the face of poverty and war and still too often choose comfort and convenience.

Lord, would you be my comfort even as You keep me desperately uncomfortable with the comfort and convenience of this world!