Starting the Day off Right: Coffee
Is there anything better than that freshly brewed cup of coffee in the morning. You wake up early in the morning still tired from yesterday. Your feet hurt from being on them all day, your groggy, and you don’t have any motivation for this dreary dreary Monday. But then, you take a sip of that hot coffee in your favorite mug and suddenly you’re invincible. You can take on anything. No mountain is too tall for you to conquer after that first cup. Eventually though, that “pick-me up” fades off and the grogginess comes back stronger than before. We begin to crash hard; lucky for us we can have a second cup of coffee in that moment. So we delay the inevitable just a little longer.
Coffee, in itself, is a beautiful thing. It truly can spark us at a moment and give us the energy we need to complete a task that feels like otherwise we wouldn’t be able too. The problem, however, is that when used as our main source of energy it begins to dictate us. We become consumed with coffee as our source to get us through each day and to get us by day-to-day. We need to learn to monitor our intake so that we can best live.
Starting the Day off Right: Christ
Is there anything that Christ can’t do? Is there anything you can’t do when you’re mind is focused on His Kingdom? As you focus on His love you see: your ability to love sky-rockets, your patience in hard circumstances rises, your joy throughout the day increases, there’s a boost to your peace throughout your day, and you find unsaid kindness, gentleness, and faithfulness to those around you. How do we get to this point? It may not be as far away as you think. Your entire day can be effective from your mood, attitude, desires, everything in only fifteen minutes.
The Perfect Combination
Too often we let the first fifteen minutes after we step out of our bed dictate the flow of the day. We hit the snooze one to many times and next thing we know we are rushed all morning getting as we get ready. As we leave to drive to work still half putting make-up on or fixing our hair to get it right in our review mirror we never fully feel ourselves. We come into work hoping to slide our time card in at exactly the same minute we’re suppose to clock-in, barely getting it but giving us our first sigh of relief. How long after that does it take to recover though? We feel unprepared for the day and spend the whole day trying to play catch-up or consuming as much coffee as we can to drown out the grogginess and horrible beginning to our day. As we get home, emotionally drained from trying to survive all day we immediately have are forced with the reality that there is no free time. We come home to cook supper, entertain the children, help them with their homework, put them to bed, and try to maintain a clean house. We fall on our beds exhausted at the end of the day hoping for a better day tomorrow.All of that because one or two extra snoozes.
Let me paint a different picture though. We intentionally wake up fifteen minutes early, don’t get me wrong we are just as tired as yesterday, but in the scheme of the day sleeping fifteen extra minutes will neither make nor break our day. We drag our butts out of bed grab our Bible and head to the kitchen. As we sit at the table, we grab a cup of coffee we take a sip and we just made up the fifteen minutes of energy we were hoping to make by sleeping in. As we sip our coffee we read the Word; it’s all so good it’s hard to know where to read but we decide on Philippians 2 because that’s where the Spirit is leading us. We read about Christ Supremacy and how He lead and served us. We finish the chapter and take a couple of minutes just to sit in the presence of God as we finish our coffee and pray that we would begin to humble ourselves as Christ demonstrated through His life. We start to get ready for the day and we are right on schedule for a normal day. We spend our time preparing for the day and we can’t stop thinking about what Christ had revealed to us in our devotion. We get to work a couple of minutes early (we’re punctual people after all). We’re on top of our game today, morning started off right we strike up a conversation at the water cooler and begin to be intentional with one of our co-workers. It wasn’t planned and we didn’t really want to at the beginning but God seemed to call us to a higher standard and we’re intuned today. We come home and we are in a great mood! Our family may notice, they may not, but we don’t care, we’re excited to see how their days went. We spend our evenings pouring into them just like the night before and as we hit the bed exhausted at the end of the day we have full confidence that God can work through us the same way tomorrow.
Moving Forward in Life
The beginning of our day can affect every part of our day. That’s why it’s crucial to start it off the right way, by surrendering ourselves to God and His plan. As we open up our hearts and begin to truly listen to Him as we start our day He won’t disappoint us, He will answer, speak and lead us. I painted to very distinct (and different) days above now is that always going to be the case? Absolutely not. But it could be more days than not. The good news is whatever way we start our day, tomorrow will always be a new day and a fresh start. That’s the beauty of the Gospel and Jesus’s undeserved unfailing eternal grace. It awaits us every morning rain or shine, granting us the opportunity for a more loving, joy-filled, and peaceful life with Him. So start your day off right, wake up early, grab some coffee and give yourself fully to Christ who will never let you down and will always change your day.
Morningside lutheran childrens ministry 