As he made the coffee, he told me that Middle Eastern countries make coffee the same way but claim it as their own. Arabs make Arabic coffee. Turks make Turkish coffee. Lebanese make Lebanese coffee. He boiled a saucepan of water, spooned in a generous amount of sugar, then added the powder-fine coffee. He stirred it, let it steep, then he transferred it into an ornate, brass coffee pot from which he dispensed two demitasses of rich coffee. He invited me to go sit in the living room where he served me from a tray. I learned in the weeks that followed that, in Lebanon, the guest is king.
Confessing that this was my first taste of Lebanese coffee, I put the cup to my lips and took a generous sip. It was scalding hot! “Slowly,” he advised. As we slowly sipped our coffee, we chatted. I learned that his home city, Beirut, was once beautiful and was known as “the Paris of the Middle East.” His memories of that city, like the coffee, were bittersweet.
I had an appointment to get to, so with apology, I said, “I must go.” Tipping back the remaining coffee in my cup, I quickly learned another Lebanese coffee lesson: each cup has a thick layer of mud at the bottom. My host smiled knowingly as I awkwardly dribbled the thick mud back into my cup. I would have many opportunities to get it right because he extended his gentle invitation often.
This experience reminds me how I frequently need a nudge, yes, even a good kick, to break from my “church routine” to spend time with neighbors, especially those who are not Christians. Christ has called us, who are his followers, to go into the world and make other followers. But if we never get “knee to knee” with people, how will we obey his command?
We Christians tend to surround ourselves with other Christians. We gather with Christian friends, look for Christian plumbers, electricians, and mechanics, effectively cutting ourselves off from the world, and all the more as our society’s morals erode. But we have been given the only remedy for sin in the world – the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Bible chides, “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!’”
