This is the first of some week-long experiments where we take something ordinary and see if we can use it to Worship God, grow as Disciples, encourage Fellowship, and practice Outreach.  And the first thing that springs to mind is the writer’s best friend — coffee.

Did you know:

• Coffee was discovered by an Ethiopian goat herder who noticed his herd acted pretty excited after eating a certain kind of berries.
• Coffee beans aren’t beans at all, but are the seeds inside a kind of cherry.

One of the main focuses of this blog is to grow a passion towards making your relationship with God a part of every moment of your life.  That’s why I started “Project: Always & Everything”,“an every growing list of unique, interesting, exciting and challenging ways that we can meet God in our daily lives and practice keeping Him Always involved with Everything we do.”

So in keeping with that idea, I want to brainstorm a bit about coffee and worship.

Worshipping Coffee

For some, drinking coffee is an act of worship — not one focused on God, but in fact worshipping the ever-so-delectable-bean itself.  Think about it.  Worship is to give honour, reverence, regard, homage and sacrifice to someone or something regarded as sacred.  Now run your attitude for coffee through that matrix.

• If you don’t have coffee for a few days, how do you feel?
• Do you pursue coffee as a necessary part of your day?
• How much time, effort, energy and money to you sacrifice for coffee?
• How do you celebrate coffee in your life? Do you have a sanctified chalice (special mug)?  Do you have any consecrated garments to celebrate your object of worship (any clothes with coffee on them)?
• When you wake up in the morning to the smell of freshly brewed coffee, filled with longing and desire to roll that first, hot, delicious, sip across your lips and past your long waiting taste buds — is it an act of emotional worship?
• Is coffee the first thought on your mind in the morning, and your source of energy and inspiration throughout the day?
• Is your coffee an idol?

Worship With Coffee

Yes, coffee can become an idol, but can drinking it also be an act of worship?  If we approach coffee remembering that God created this world full of amazing things to enjoy but not worshiped (1 Corinthians 6:12-13, 19-20), have our hearts focused on God in thanksgiving and prayer (Ephesians 5:20, 6:18), then I believe we can redeem our coffee time and make it an act of worship.  How?

1. Make God your first thought in the morning, and then thank Him for creating things we can enjoy, and even use to perk us up for His service – like coffee!
2. Do an idol check now and again by not having coffee for a time (a week, a month) to be sure that it is not controlling you, and you are not dependant on it.  (Here’s an infographic about caffeine.)
3. Thank God for all the people, from harvest to processing to delivery to the store clerk, that worked hard to get that coffee into your hands.  You may want to (strongly) consider drinking only fair-trade coffee.
4. Have coffee with your Father.  Capture the time you take drinking that first cup as a time to simply be with God.  Not rushing around, not dumping it into a to-go mug, not even during your bible-study time.  Just take that time to talk things over with your Father in Heaven.

What about you?  Have you ever worshipped at the altar of the great bean?  Can you think of ways you can connect coffee and worship?