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Eternal Sweetness
- David Brown
- Jul 20, 2011
- Category: Life
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It's Tuesday night. I'm sitting in Starbucks, enjoying a Cafe' Mocha, checking my Facebook and Twitter accounts. The book I'm presently reading is laying by in case I get to it. I may not open it. It's not my social networking that has my attention tonight as much as does some regular old “people watching”. People watching and people thinking. I'm thinking about people as I watch.
Three women are immersed in a business discussion, no doubt a multi-level marketing plan of some kind or maybe a cosmetic business. Another table is filled with 20-Somethings. They're kind of laid back and talking real easy. Outside is a middle aged couple and what appears to be a 10 year old grandson. They're eating ice cream from next door. Traffic is steady in and out of the coffee shop. People in and people out...most of them holding sweet iced beverages since it's still 95 degrees outside even though it's 9 pm. A couple are talking. Communicating as they say. He's looking into her eyes. All of this is set to some nice and easy music. I just listened to a Roy Orbison classic. Now there's some smooth jazz going. Just a normal summer evening in a Texas coffee shop.
You'd think all is well. The five dollar drinks we're all drinking defies the fact that our country is in a deep recession. Everyone seems relatively happy, although I know most broken hearts and red swollen eyes are home tonight. They won't come out and be seen by the happy crowd. Isn't that life? Bitter sweet. There's joy...but there's sadness. There's love...but there's hate. There's Starbucks nightlife...and there's suffering and starvation somewhere in the world tonight. Actually, there's probably some starving people just blocks from here. You don't have to go far to see human suffering. Life is filled with it.
Before I came to Starbucks tonight I visited two ladies. One is a member of our church. The other isn't. I visited one in her home, the other in hospice. One is African American, the other is Anglo. What they have in common is that they both have been diagnosed with terminal cancer. One is praying for a miracle. The other, just wants to go home to heaven as easily as she can.
Somewhere tonight, someone is celebrating, partying and singing. They're happy, without a care in the world. Somewhere else, someone is crying. I know a lady who is crying, doing her best to hold on to faith, wondering what to do next. You see, not only does she have cancer, her husband just had a stroke. He's in a rehab hospital and she doesn't have the strength to visit him every day. Life is bitter sweet. And sometimes more bitter than sweet.
Ever since Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of the knowledge of “good and evil”, life has been bittersweet. God meant for life to be good. Just sweet. No mixture of good and evil...bitter and sweet. That didn't last long though. Satan's sinful suggestion to the first couple took care of that. So now life is...bittersweet. Sometimes it's really sweet. Sometimes...really bitter. And for some, much more bitter than sweet.
Now, college age girls are coming in. They've got their computers and their friends with them. They're happy. Life is sweet. I'll bet for every happy girl though, there's an unhappy girl sitting at home wondering why she can't be happy. Again, the bittersweet human experience.
There's an old saying that goes like this. “You have to take the bitter with the sweet.” Well, I guess we all do don't we. Every human being I ever met was living a life of bitter and sweet. We hate the bitter and yearn for the sweet. We savor the sweet...we curse the bitter. Then we look for ways to deal with it all. Make sense of it. Process it. Understand it. But most of all we want to conquer it. We hate it. It's not natural. It's not right. It shouldn't be...this bitter that compromises the sweet. Why can't life just be sweet?
Well, here's the good news. Real life is sweet. Real life is the life that God wants to give every human person. It's a life force that is injected into the heart of every believer in Jesus, the one who hung on a cross to release the eternal sweetness of God and to conquer the bitterness born by sin.
He said, if we'd believe in him...we would never die. (Death is the ultimate bitter.) Eternal life could also be thought of as eternal sweetness. It will come at the proper time. It's called the end of time...the restoration of all things...the day of the Lord...Judgment. Judgment is not just everyone getting judged...it's justice. It's everything being made right, finally and eternally. When everything is made right, it will be sweet.
That day is coming. Eternal rightness. Eternal sweetness. Bitterness will be put away.
Love and sweetness has conquered all sin and bitterness...at the cross, proven by Christ's resurrection. He conquered death, hell, the grave and...bitterness.
The happiest people, the coolest people, the prettiest people...even the Starbucks crowd at best have a bittersweet life. But there's a better life coming...a sweet life.
That's what I'm thinking about tonight at Starbucks. Sweetness is coming. Eternal sweetness. I'm looking forward to it. I'm looking forward to a sweetness that lasts longer than a visit to Starbucks, longer than an evening out, or a vacation, a high, a honeymoon or a new exciting experience.
An eternal sweetness. I'm in. I believe.
- David Brown
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Sarah Brown on Jul 20, 2011 9:05pm
I am Praying and Believing for Eternal Sweetness in my life! Thank you PD for being what God has called you to be! Love You PD!!
~Sarah Brown~