A group of alumni, highly established in their careers, got together to visit their old university professor.
Conversation soon turned into complaints about stress in work and life. Offering his guests coffee, the professor went to the kitchen and returned with a large pot of coffee and an assortment of cups – porcelain, plastic, glass, crystal, some plain looking, some expensive, some exquisite – telling them to help themselves to the coffee.
When all the students had a cup of coffee in hand, the professor said: “If you noticed, all the nice looking expensive cups were taken up, leaving behind the plain and cheap ones.
“While it is normal for you to want only the best for yourselves, that is the source of your problems and stress. Be assured that the cup itself adds no quality to the coffee.
“In most cases it is just more expensive and in some cases even hides what we drink. What all of you really wanted was coffee, not the cup, but you consciously went for the best cups … and then you began eyeing each other’s cups.
“Now consider this,” he continued. “Life is the coffee. The jobs, money and position in society are the cups.
“They are just tools to hold and contain life, and the type of cup we have does not define, nor change the quality of life we live. Sometimes, by concentrating only on the cup, we fail to enjoy the coffee God has provided us.”
God brews the coffee, not the cups … Enjoy your coffee!
“The happiest people don’t have the best of everything. They just make the best of everything they have.” Live simply. Love generously. Care deeply. Speak kindly … and leave the rest to God.
Abundance of hope in Rural Ireland
Last week the national ploughing championships, celebrated in warm sunshine, the abundance of hope that is contained within rural Ireland.
An abundant harvest might be described in agricultural terms as a “bumper crop.” A bumper crop is a crop that has yielded an unusually productive harvest. When you reap an abundant harvest, you will have more than enough, overflow, and blessing on top of blessing.
There will be no lack, nothing will be missing, and all desires fulfilled – and then some.
Leviticus 26:3-5, describes an abundant harvest this way: “If you obey all of my commandments, I will give you regular rains, and the land will yield bumper crops, and the trees will be loaded with fruit long after the normal time!
“And grapes will still be ripening when sowing time comes again. You shall eat your fill, and live safely in the land.”
Would you like to see that kind of harvest in your life this year? That’s God’s plan for you. Psalm 115:14 says, “May the Lord give you increase more and more, you and your children”. God wants to increase you more and more.
Maybe it doesn’t look like it is even possible in your world right now – a harvest in your health, finances or family, but remember this: The laws of the spirit supersede the laws of the natural.
It doesn’t need to look possible or even be possible – the favour of God will propel you further and faster than you could ever imagine.
SEE ALSO – Transform your difficulties and draw goodness from the negativities
