Many of us begin our day with a cup of coffee – thanks be to God and the hands that picked those beans and all the middle folk who got it to the house and the brewing machine. That’s the best cup of all. My second all-time favorite is the 23rd cup that shows up at the end of a psalm by the same name and number.
The perpetual problem with this cup of biblical proportions is that it is always spilling and overflowing. The other issue is that the cup owners must put up with all the goodness and mercy that follow them all the days of their lives. And to beat all, you end up living in the house of the Lord forever! How’s that going to work? Will the place have enough coffee cups for the early risers? Will stingy cup holders be willing to share their good fortunes better than they ever did in this life? [Think Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16]
As many of us recently reveled in the New Year, we also reflected on the goodness of the year just gone. We even joined in singing those ancient words of Robert Burns: For auld lang syne, my dear, / for auld lang syne, we’ll take a cup of kindness yet,/ for auld lang syne. For all those good times, let’s lift our cups full of kindness in a considerate salute to all God’s folk.
There’s the cup we certainly could use these days. Kindness has been conspicuously absent throughout the world in the past few years, and it would be a refreshing change to have combo cup of kindness overflowing with goodness and mercy. [No Styrofoam please] Far be it from me to delineate the lack of civility and neighborliness with which we are constantly reminded in the daily news. There hardly seems to be any concern for our common good anymore, and nonchalance is having a heyday as if anyone really cared.
Global warming and our cold-hearted shenanigans to shut out others are on a collision course as we begin a new decade. And no one seems to give a rip while protecting their own skin and profit. Another name for this awful uncaring and apathetic attitude is one of the seven deadly sins known as sloth.
Some people think that sloth is what you get when you stay in the tub too long, but it’s the worst of the seven deadly sins committed by people with good intentions. They mean well, bless their hearts, but they are letting all the kindness leak out of their own coveted cups in their complete disregard for their neighbors. It’s about time we take up arms and live out those words in Ephesians: “Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted…” Kindness doesn’t just appear out of the blue but in the random acts we initiate for the good of the whole.
And for God’s sake, don’t play innocent with your “I just don’t know what to do!” or worse, “who cares?” That’s sloth at its lowest level of enigmatic inertia! We all know what to do when you see it: fetch your cup of kindness and let your goodness and mercy go to work!