I used to think my deep freeze was the most spiritual place in my house. It’s exactly how I would imagine heaven: full of coffee and meat. But that was a pretty limited view of heaven, especially in terms of what it looks like to live out the Kingdom of God here on earth. After a few years of reading various theologians and discerning what it looks like to live out my faith as I pretend the Kingdom, I have changed my perspective.
Heaven is not a land flowing with meat and coffee. Heaven is a tea collection.
I just learned this recently, having discovered the joy of loose leaf tea. It makes for a pleasant night-cap with it’s low caffeine level and diverse tastes/flavors. At their core, a lot of the teas have similarities. They are organic materials that you steep for a period of time. They have slightly bitter undertones.
And though teas share these similarities, they also have differences. My South African tea is red with a full-bodied flavor. The Oolong has leaves that are tucked tight until water is added, at which point they are talked into spreading out full-length. Indian Black Chai is made up of tiny little black specks that look like carbon particles. Even a novice tea drinker like myself can see the differences.
It takes far more acute perception to find differences in coffees . All the beans look essentially the same. They essentially taste the same, as well. It takes some experience to understand the subtle difference in coffees.
Which is why it’s more appropriate for me to over-spiritualize my tea collection, rather than my coffee surplus. The Kingdom should look more like a collection of teas. Beautiful in their array of color and flavor. Beautiful in the scope of shape and size. A collection of flavors that have clear similarities, but also distinctions that reflect the cultures from which they come out of.
Renew and Restore
