Some people think God is in the details.
I’ve come to believe the Devil is in there too.
At least he got in my coffee.
I love the aroma of fresh brewed coffee first thing in the
morning. Breathing deeply over the cup, the coffee smell becomes like incense
to me, truly an “ahh” moment, practically a daily ritual, a part of my morning
wake-up call for prayer.
But on occasion, not every morning, but when I have too much
coffee left over from the previous day---and not being one to waste precious
java---I drink a cup, maybe even two, of the day old coffee before brewing the
fresh.
My wife will have nothing of the stale stuff and looks down
upon what she thinks is an overly zealous coffee conservation habit.
“Day old coffee,” she mumbles, turning up her nose.
But I’ve persisted in my occasional indulgence in coffee
leftovers.
Since I arise before daylight for my morning prayers and
prefer only a dim light at that time, I don’t notice much about the details of
the coffee’s texture as I pour it into my cup.
I was all the way to the last sip from my first cup of day
old coffee when it happened.
Something chewy was in that last drop.
I turned it around on my tongue, pressing it to the roof of
my mouth, hoping it was a coffee ground.
It wasn’t.
I gently removed the specimen from the tip of my tongue.
Yep, a dead fly.
For a germaphobe like me, this was totally unnerving. It
would have been bad enough had the fly floated into my mouth from the top of
the cup, upon my first sip, but no, that churlish creature hid himself down
there at the bottom, concealing himself until he could carry Lord knows what
disease deep into my circulatory system. That fly had, unbeknownst to me, cozied
up to me, both of us sharing the same cup, his germs swirling around in my
saliva.
The invasion had gone undetected for an at least ten minutes.
Holding that dead fly between my thumb and index finger,
squinting to make sure it was what it was, I felt like crying out as the lepers
of Old Testament days were required to do: “Unclean, unclean, unclean.”
Somewhere during the night, that fly had nosedived into my
coffee, backstroked across the coffee pot, spread his foul DNA through my day
old brew before succumbing to a heroic fly’s death. “At least I’ve messed up
one human’s morning cup,” he probably uttered before drowning in the dark drink.
Yes, the Devil is in the details---right there at the bottom
of my coffee cup.
Wise King Solomon of old had it right: “Dead flies can make
even perfume stink.”
They can ruin a decent cup of day old coffee, too.
Flies were, in the history of the Christianity, often
interpreted as spiritual dangers, and Satan was known as “lord of the flies.”
Solomon drew the application in the second half of his
statement about flies in perfume: “In the same way, a little foolishness can
spoil wisdom.”
Satan is a tricky one. He doesn’t announce himself, “I’m over
here, in your coffee, and I’m going to spread harmful germs all the way down your
esophagus, so you better throw out out this cup of coffee.”
No, he’s much too sneaky for that. He waits until we have
drunk our fill, then he announces, “Ha-ha, gotcha, fool.”
He hides in the details at the bottom of the cup so that
it’s too late once we have recognized him for who he is. By then, he’s done the deed; we’ve been taken
in because we’ve taken him in.
A good person’s long honored reputation can be ruined
because of one tragic mistake, one fly in the ointment.
It’s at the bottom of the cup that you discover that you’ve
hurt someone you deeply love, your ethics have been compromised, your moral
compass has been broken.
I could get a magnifying glass and flashlight and peer into
my day old coffee for flies, maybe even get a strainer and pour the cold stuff through
it---just to make sure before heating it in the microwave.
Instead I’ll just start fresh.
Casting out the old.
Making preparations for the coming of Another.
In the dawn of a new day.
