Convicted By My Coffee Pot

Good morning…

Overflowing black liquid. Sizzling burnt smell. Mess moving across our kitchen counter. The new coffee pot our kids bought for me this summer was “acting out” terribly. “Did you read the directions?” our wise daughter asked.

“Of course not,” I thought. “A coffee pot is a coffee pot. I know how to work a coffee pot.”

Fortunately, we have a drawer where we stash appliance instructions, so we pulled out the pristine pages, reading them together for the first time.

1. Regularly change internal filter after ninety uses.
2. Center the handle of the glass pot on the base.
3. Keep plastic lid on the basket to secure coffee grounds.

Huh. I did not even know there was an internal filter. I had positioned the handle any way I pleased. And, finding the plastic lid a little bit cumbersome, early on I had discarded it in the trash. My new coffee pot, our wise daughter, and a humorous God held up for me a humbling mirror: “Now, who is really is ‘acting out’ in this daily relationship?”