Some cooking pots are not designed to be washed. A good cast iron pan? If it is seasoned properly, all we do is wipe it out and coat it with oil to freshen the seasoning.
Then, imagine the flavor we get out of a good pot of coffee. The scrubbing cleansers and the bleach that bring our pot to a like-new shine also remove the essence of what makes our coffee especially delicious.
Even so, no one would doubt we need to occasionally wash that pot, and most of us would choose to dip that cast iron pan in a sink of hot water from time to time, even if we have to season it all over again.
We have to maintain those things we touch. If we choose to let them go, then they will become unusable, no more than rejects, and soon to be cast aside on the trash heap.
That includes the people around us. We have to maintain our friends, our relatives, and our spouses. We have to season our children, bleach our interactions with others, and generally pay attention to how we treat our fellow man.
The Word is sprinkled with examples. Let’s look at three of these:
1 Timothy 5:8
“But if anyone does not provide for his relatives, and especially for members of his household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.”
This is our cast iron pan. If we cook in it but do not maintain it, it will rust and become useless. If we do not keep up our families, providing for them financially as well as emotionally, they will corrode around us, making our Christian testimony vile and repulsive.
Luke 10:30-37
“Jesus replied, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. Now by chance a priest was going down that road, and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. So likewise a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. He went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.’ ”
This is our coffee pot. The priest and the Levite only knew the flavor of yesterday’s cup of coffee, for their old prejudices stained their dealings with others. The Samaritan let compassion scrub his perceptions clean, and he did for his fellow man what the others could not.
Genesis 4:8
“Cain spoke to Abel his brother. And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him.”
Jealously cast Cain upon the trash heap of life. Rather than clean his relationship with the Lord and with his brother, he chose to toss it aside as worthless.
Jesus summed up the ultimate coffee pot washing technique in Matthew 7:12.
“So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.”
How simple is that? Another way to say it is to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and consider how we’d view our actions through their eyes. When we do that, we’ve scrubbed the pot, and our brew will come out fresh, new, and very, very tasty.
Living for God involves living for our fellow man, also.
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