A Refreshing Cup of Tea

My keen reader will immediately spot a link with my last post here, which referred to my late mother stirring her tea and gazing out of the window.  One of my morning pleasures is to enjoy a mug of tea as I read my Bible; it happens to be beside my window, but the armchair is so low that I can see nothing out of my window but a tree and a telegraph pole.  One day I might write about them but today I want to focus on the brew.

Usually, if I'm offered tea, my response is to ask if coffee is available; I find pleasure in tea only if it's Earl Grey and, since that's not universally available, I don't like to appear too fussy.  When I visit my cousin, I have to be sure to take my own tea-bags since she "refuses to drink tea that tastes like washing-up liquid!"  I can see where she's coming from.  The secret is in the bergamot and lemon flavouring that is present throughout the drink.

Let me confess the extent of my fussiness and say that not all Earl Grey teas are the same.  I bought a cheaper brand once and found that - although the box offered the same distinctive fragrance - there was so little actual flavour in the tea itself that I had to replace it.  Maybe it happened to be the 'end of the line', but I never bought that brand again!

As I remembered that imperfect tea, I thought of Jesus' teaching about Christian behaviour in what is known as the Sermon on the Mount.  "You are the salt of the earth," He told the crowds who listened, "but if the salt loses its saltiness, how can it be made salty again?  It is no longer good for anything, except to be thrown out and trampled underfoot." (Matt. 5:13).  I think that's what happened to the tea I replaced.

Later in his gospel, Matthew quotes a short parable Jesus used to illustrate the nature of the Kingdom of Heaven: "like yeast that a woman took and mixed into about 30 kilograms of flour until it worked all through the dough." (Matt. 13:33).  The yeast reached every part of the dough and the Kingdom of God reaches every person who commits himself to Jesus.

There's a common saying, sometimes found in one a number of slight variations, that a rotten apple spoils the whole barrel.  If there's just a small part of the dough that the yeast hasn't reached, or a single tea-bag in the box that didn't go through the proper filter, or strayed in from another production line, it can spoil the end product, be it an evenly raised loaf, a good cup of tea or anything else.  We've seen this over the last few years as one wave of scandal after another has hit the headlines over child abuse within a church context.

Each of us must remember that the Church is Christ's ambassador on earth.  It is the individual Christian who carries His credentials to the non-believer and it's his behaviour on which the non-believer will base his decision whether or not to believe.  We all should do our best to reflect our Lord in every aspect of our lives for, even though a slip can be forgiven, any bad impression it has left will not be easily erased.