One Cup at a Time

I make tea in stressful situations.  When my girls were home working on difficult projects, I would make them a tea tray.  Even now, like clockwork, about 3 p.m. I need a “cupa,” as my British friend used to say.  Since the time my girls were little, I have always said there is never anything we can’t solve together over a cup of tea, and I am never too busy to brew a pot. I have just brewed myself a pot of tea. I must be solving the world’s problems today!

Tea is an ordinary drink consumed worldwide, yet tea is served with ceremony in many cultures.   When I would visit my grandmother, tea is what she served with lunch, every day, no matter the menu, even hot dogs!  Tea at her house was a staple and represented comfort and relaxation. I now have the cup she used.  On my first visit to Victoria, British Columbia as a young girl, I was completely astonished at how every business closed for tea in the afternoon.  The teahouse that my dad took us to on that trip is the birthplace of my love for the tea ceremony. 

I do not understand how tea brings me such peace or how the tea ceremony can make me feel so special and fulfilled.  After all, it’s just boiled water poured over a bunch of leaves!  Doesn’t sound so special, does it? Yet, what comes from the natural resource of water and something nature provides can be extraordinary, if you take the time.

Isaiah 53:2 says, “He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground.” I love the analogy of nature here and how the shoot is soft and tender.  Usually, nothing comes from parched ground, but in this case, something miraculous happened.  “He had no beauty or majesty. . .” Unless you are consuming tea in a fine tea house or with the queen, I would say tea has no beauty or majesty in and of itself, “. . . no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.” 

How often do I forget that God has provided us with something so ordinary, a Son.  The commonality of His birth and His appearance is just a plain old cup of tea in one of my chipped cups.  Who He is, is the breathtakingly beautiful and peaceful tea ceremony, full of rich flavors and bouquets that take an ordinary life and make it extraordinary? My needs and desires are steeped in His glory.  His Holy Spirit washes over the shriveled tea leaves of my offering and from it comes a glorious cup of surrender with praise and worship wafting from the surface with an aroma that is pleasing to only Him.  It is there, in the middle of that cup of tea, with or without the ceremony, that I am at peace one cup at a time.