Be Like A Coffee Bean

Coffee Shops; Today's Local Watering Hole / Library

When life heats up on you, the manner you respond makes all the difference.

Think of a boiling pot of water with three different items in it:

An egg, a piece of carrot, and a coffee bean.

Now reflect on your life, your person and your heart when considering how these three things react differently to boiling hot water.

For me personally, at times I respond to life's heat in all three of these ways.

Sometimes it is one before the other, and sometimes it is a repeated sequence.

It is a learning process.

Life is about learning.

Life's lessons are constant... and always purposed.

A friend of mine was sharing this analogy with me recently.

We were both reflecting on the challenge of forgiving others when they hurt us.

And in thinking about how forgiveness isn't so much for the person doing the wrong (forgiving them and clearing them of their wrong-doing), forgiveness is very much also for the one doing the forgiving.

The anger, pain and frustration can be released when forgiving the other person.

Forgiveness isn't only one-sided or a one-way street.

Forgiveness is a heart lesson, one which can prevent bitterness, among other things like hatred, from taking root, regret and so on.

When I was being taught this analogy of the three items in a pot of boiling water, I was realizing how my heart can easily be hardened like the egg.

My 'self' can also feel brittle and falling apart, like the carrot eventually becomes when boiling in hot water.

Yet, as my friend taught me, we (and our hearts) need to always aim to be like the coffee bean.

What happens to a coffee bean when it is in boiling hot water?

It releases the good taste, perhaps its “saltiness” as the parable and teaching expresses, into the water... changing the water's environment.

There is purpose and lessons in this very simple story... and we can learn something very valuable.

Here is the traditional story of the carrot, egg and coffee bean.