A Second Chance

The coffee shop worker that came by the table a couple of nights ago was only answering a question about my friend's particular cup, "Well, it's one of our imports from Brazil, if that's what you mean. It is a medium roast so the actual bean flavour isn't extremely bitter, but there are some nice blueberry undertones that supplement the overall bouquet; that and the ground hazlenut and nutmeg. We've got another from northern Africa that tastes similar, but it is a darker roast. We've got a pot on if you'd like to try..."

The lot of us just sat there nodding our heads in opaque assent. When the clerk left we just stared at our cups in silence until we could eventually chuckle over how well he knew his coffee. Incredible.

I've been trying to neatly wrap my mind around the idea that God loves us. Without change. Without equal. Without fail. The difficulty is tragically ironic because I've grown up with all the Christian jargon and Sunday School lessons necissary to equip one for a tidy recitation of passages and elizabethan phrases on the topic. I think I just want boundaries. I need places in my thought where I can realize that I've reached the north side of God's love and follow the fence rails around the entire perimeter. Unsettlingly (and at the same time with much comfort) I realize that I can't. Maybe it is the untangableness of it that makes me truly appreciate the ways in which God actively loves in my life (the broad gammet of provision, correction, teaching, and second chances).

Today I got a second chance at something that I'd totally given up on. For years. Incredible.

Comfort comes to me in the understanding that my heart's incomprehensible deceitfulness doesn't change the inexplicably high degree to which God loves me. And keeps on loving me. Even today.