What is the real value in a cup of hot coffee?
We sat bellies full from the hotel’s hot breakfast.
Hot cup of coffee
Outside the wind was ripping and flurries blowing like tumbleweed in a Texas spring. Bundled up from toes to head, business professionals and tourists alike ducked their chins and scurried about. As the frogs’ croaking in a summer’s dawn from my backyard deck, the honking horns and roaring sirens are as necessary to the symphony of Manhattan’s roadside concert.
Inside, hot coffee in hand and my love by my side, it was easy to forget it winter was roaring one open door away.
NYC
Hot coffee in my hands was really a body warmer.
We left our coats 19 floors up, and the bakery was only two blocks down Lexington Avenue, so with a fresh hot cup of coffee in our hands (read: hand warmers), we circled through the lobby exit braced for the impending freeze.
NYC Winter sky line
3-2-1 Yep, there it was. My handsome man walking around NYC wearing a white short sleeve v-neck shirt really caught others by surprise. His size normally steals glances, but necks were really spinning that day especially. My amusement must have kept my body as warm as the hot coffee did my hands. I was strangely immune to my normal bone chill.
I wasn’t as cold as I thought, but the hot coffee was much more valuable.
We came out of each one of the bakeries as quickly and empty handed as we went in, but that was ok because all ten fingers were enjoying holding on to my hot coffee cup. Apparently all of New York does not make Lobster Tail Pastries -breaking news our son back home would not appreciate, as this jaunt through the streets looks to end up being a waste of time enduring the freezing temps and weaving through passersby.
Manhattan passersby
Hot cup of coffee?
New Yorkers walk. A lot. I thought it was the secret to being thin while surrounded by some of the best restaurants in the country, but now I really know. In the cold months, when the pedestrian stop lights flash red it really means to jog in place or else freeze standing there. While I was doing my jog, careful not to spill the yet untouched coffee out of my cup, the little white lighted man showed up giving us the GO to walk across, finally! I waste no time and start to cross. My husband tugs my shoulder indicating he wasn’t ready to walk. WHY? I turned around to hear him as I watched his Starbucks cup change hands, “Hot cup of coffee, Sir?”
That looks so good. And the value of that hot cup of coffee was now evident.
I don’t know why this older man carried a sign and had no home. I wonder where his family is, does he have one and do they hurt like he does? Did life turn so fast and hard he had only the choice of picking himself off the street every morning, or was there a continuum of choices which led him here? I don’t know, and it didn’t matter. He was freezing. My husband knew the Lord wanted him to give him his coffee. It wasn’t much, but it was everything he had to give, and he did. I will probably hear his voice for a long time; it was quiet, it was shaky from the cold, and it was full of gratitude, “That looks so good.”
Blessed is the one who considers the poor! In the day of trouble the Lord delivers him. Psalm 41:1
I bet in my entire life I’ve never enjoyed a cup of coffee as much as this man did. If you know me, you understand the weight of those words.
If you know the Lord, be encouraged as I was to just think about what the real value in a hot cup of coffee could be, and maybe look around your world a little more, a little longer and a little more selflessly than life’s ordinary pace. My husband, again, teaches me about the still small voice of God. And about obedience. I’m listening, Lord and I’m willing.
