If I where a BOY....

I work for Costa Coffee, to be fair it's probably more than work, most of the time it's live.   

Every year Costa holds a competition, involving baristas from over 1,000 Costa stores around the world. Searching for the barista with the best technical skill, presentation, personality and passion for coffee. 

I’d been with a franchise Costa for 4 years, the Barista of the year wasn’t something that they particularly focused on, until recently. Working for a franchise, in such an amazing store, (Dartford) with a great team, meant our standards where impeccable.

We had time to practice, time to work really hard, people checking on us and helping us to get it right. Working with those guys it was just the norm.

In November last year I decided it was time to move on from Dartford and franchise, and joined  ‘proper’ Costa Coffee in Bluewater, West Village. An amazing gem of a store hidden from the masses, for those wanting a little bit of peace and a comfy sofa!

At West Village I was fortunate to have an amazing manager for 4 months, Phil Martin, who came 3^rd in 2010 in BotY. He lead the store by example with the highest standards and hard work. I picked up a few of his skills and tricks and am still very grateful for his continued help and support, even though he is busy with his new store in Lakeside Retail Park.

June the 22^nd was the date for our area heat, I didn’t think that I could win but I knew/hoped I wasn’t the worst ever so there had to be someone worse than me. Basically I thought I’d go for a laugh, see what it was like, and I just didn’t want to come last!

There was about 16 of us in total, from people that had only been with the company a couple of months to Assistant Managers. It was a fun night, lots of food, and conversation, underpinned with a slight nervous tension from everyone that wanted to do the best that they could.

I waited until nearly the very end for my turn, only me and one other person left, John, who was at the time Assistant Manager in the same store as me.

By this point there were a few disappointed faces, I’d seen a few people making silly mistakes and a lot of extremely nervous, shaking people.

When it was me turn I just remembered why I was there, “to not come last” and I giggled to myself. I approached the coffee machine, and just did my job.

I finished and they said, “Are you done?” “yes” I replied. “Are you happy with your drinks?” “yep” I responded “that was the quickest time so far” and he smiled, I felt a little excited but still didn’t rank myself top 5, “but are they the best?”.

When they where starting to announce the winners, I had a small thought sneak into my head, “I could win” and I quickly threw it away. So many amazing people in the room, that had spent hours practicing, and rehearsing, and I who didn’t even know it was happening until the day before and hadn’t practiced at all! How could I win?

Amazingly I came first!

So I got through the area heat. Which meant I had to think up a specialty drink. Something new, something amazing, something that would knock the judges socks of and help me to win the whole thing to become the Champion of Champions.

…And I had nothing, other than a joke about a T-cinno, which a customer ordered once. 1/3^rd Tea, 1/3^rd Milk and 1/3^rd froth. The socks would definitely be staying on for that one.

I’d researched some pictures and watched the films on YouTube, but it left me even more upset and worried!

Then one night as I was falling asleep, it came to me.

Seen as I’m getting married this year, I should do something wedding related. When you think of weddings you think of, tradition, extravagance, elegance. Everything that coffee is about. White wedding dresses, flowers, food… CAKE!

Well that’s all I’m going to tell you for now.

The drink is nearly mastered; the next stage of the competition (the regionals) is a week and a half away. And I’m going to go there, have a good time and do my job.

…It would be quite nice to win now…

Faith

I have always struggled with the word faith, the only times I’ve heard it mentioned are when someone has it or hasn’t got it, or should have it, “you gotta have faith” George Micheal.

Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things unseen. The promise of wishes fulfilled, the belief in the absence of tangible proof.

It’s easy to confuse faith with trust, or a belief in something but the part that separates them is in the absence of concrete fact.

In the past I have tried to explain faith referring to the sitting process. When we sit on a chair we sit down believing that the chair will hold us and that we won’t fall on the floor. Recently I’ve realized that for the majority sitting on a chair is just an act of trust in the chair, based on the evidence of it not breaking previously and the health and safety requirements that must be adhered.

I’m not trying to say that faith requires no evidence, to believe something with no substantiation would be blind faith, or similarly naivety, and the consequences of making decisions or the foundations for life without weighing up options and researching are extremely serious. For example you could go to the Doctor because of a pain. The Doctor recommends surgery but without investigating the operation, the side effects, other possible causes of the pain and other possible treatments, you go ahead with the surgery and the side effects of the operation cause a much bigger problem than the original pain.

We should approach all things with an open-minded skepticism, not naïve nor cynical.

"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forego their use." - Galileo Galilei

“[Faith] is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods” C S Lewis.

My faith is in Jesus, that he died for me so that I may live, it is based on my observations of the world, events that have happened in my life, experiences beyond natural explanation, experiences of others, the work of the Holy Spirit, and the love of God. I doubt and question regularly if what I believe is correct, I query my opinions and beliefs. But no matter what I ponder, no matter how much the cynical society says that this is all there is to life, and no matter how it does sometimes feel like that, I just know that God is real, Jesus is alive. 

What's your flava?

One of the things we talked about yesterday in a seminar was challenges facing Christian life and how we can apply biblical teaching to solving and overcoming these issues.

We looked into specifically how to view the many areas of our busy lives, the demands we all have and how we can apply Christian teaching on the subject. 

The most important teaching to look at is Matt 22:37-40, Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18

^37-40Jesus said, "'Love the Lord your God with all your passion and prayer and intelligence.' This is the most important, the first on any list. But there is a second to set alongside it: 'Love others as well as you love yourself.' These two commands are pegs; everything in God's Law and the Prophets hangs from them."

The message we often get from society is that we should have a balanced life, or a good work life balance. But this implies that work isn’t life, and that work and life is all there is to it. 

So what about family? What about friends, church, hobbies? How do they fit into a work life balance? It doesn’t really seem to work does it? And definitely not from a biblical view.

Is it possible to fit all these different and varied areas of our life into two tidy compartments?

Another way Christians tend to look at life is like the diagram to the left, putting God at the centre and the other areas of life off of that in order of importance going out from the middle. But the Bible says we should love everyone the same, not family more than work or work more than community. 

Looking at life this way often leads to a duality in thinking, the separation of areas of life which are sacred and secular. 

Take this list for example:

Church

Prayer

Worship

Family

Work

Education

Music

Fashion

Sport

Art

Community

Politics

Business

How would you separate the sacred parts of your life from the secular? Most people would decide that the first 3-5 items are sacred and that the rest are secular. 

But wouldn't it be much more helpful if we took a different approach and drew a zig zag line down the middle and have one side as faithful and the other as unfaithful, as there are some sections of our life which it is easier to remain faithful to God and others in which it is a struggle. 

One of my favourite shops is called Sblended. They take milk, icecream, and any chocolate bar of your choice and make the most amazing milkshakes that I have ever tasted. My favourite of all the flavours is daim bandits, yummy. My point is a lot of different ingredients and the right amounts of each go into making these milk shakes taste so amazing (and a lot of calories, but it’s worth it!) and that is also what makes life taste so good.

Instead of viewing life as a balance we could view it as a blend, with God in the centre and a blend of all the things that make up our life. 

Also we have to be willing to change, as commitments and the seasons of our life vary. For example at the moment a lot of my time is spent working and with my partner, in the future we may have children. We would then have to completely change how we spend our time. Because as the ingredients change so will the blend. But always remaining to have God at the centre and to pray he will show us our priorities and how to use our time and resources wisely. 

Life is ... Love

So today is Day 2 of our Spring Harvest 2011, Week 3 Minehead. It is so exciting and amazing to be here, despite the nerve rackingly long drive to get here, and I’m really looking forward to hearing what God wants me to learn this week. 

The theme this week is Route 66. It is about exploring the Bible and the claims we make about it. Using four key metaphors.

The metaphor for todays teaching is the Scripture is a Sonnet.  The Oxford dictionary definition is:

Sonnet (n.). A poem of fourteen lines, using any of a number of formal rhyme schemes.

A sonnet takes knowledge, authority and inspiration to write. There is always a voice at the heart of a sonnet and very often what they speak is love.

Love

Pedro Arrupe said:

Nothing is more practical than finding God, that is, than falling in love in a quite absolute, final way.

What you are in love with, what seizes your imagination, will affect everything.

It will decide what will get you out of bed in the morning, what you do with your weekends, what you read, who you know, what breaks your heart, and what amazes you with joy and gratitude.

Fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

This brings me back to when I first came to Spring Harvest. I wasn’t really a Christian when I first came to Spring Harvest; I came with the youth group from my local church, The Brent Methodist. It astounds me how my life has changed since then. How he has turned my life around and got me back on track. How he healed my scars, even the literal ones, and gave me hope.

On my third time at Spring Harvest something happened to me that really kicked me into gear and made me realize who I am. I was walking back from the evening worship and I just could not stop singing, I was so happy! 

Have you seen the cup a soup advert before with the blue hug? Well that’s how I felt, like I was being hugged all over, embraced with love. My heart was just so full of love and happiness more than how I felt with or towards my first love, more than I’ve felt towards a friend, or family member.  More than I have ever felt, ever.

And as I sat there, listening to the waves crashing against the shore in the background, singing at the top of my voice things just made sense. I realized it was ok to love myself, because God loves me! And as if it was something out of a movie, fireworks started to go of in the night sky.

I was able to make changes in my life, my addictions slowly ceased, my scars from self-harm disappeared, my confidence increased. I was ready to live.

Because life is about love. God’s love.

Like Pedro Arrupe says, fall in love, stay in love, and it will decide everything.

So back to todays message, the scripture as sonnet, a love song, composed by the creator, inspired by the almighty.

“Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so”

John 3:16 “This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son.”

So when ever we need to remember that God loves us all we need to do is turn to His Word, and pray that He will show us His love and He will. 

ty G x