Steeping
Coffee beans being ground was a regular sound in my childhood home, and coffee was my college apartment’s signature smell thanks to my java-loving roomie. But even through all of that, my tastebuds were just not made for coffee. I’m a lover of tea. Hot tea, cold tea, sweet tea, black tea, herbal tea, all the teas. I love the whole process.
Part of the process of making tea is steeping. Whether you have loose leaf tea or a tea bag or a fancy sachet, boiling water has to be poured over the leaves for the flavor to be released.
Making a mug of hot tea is part of my morning routine, and it’s something I look forward to with a very happy heart. Sleepily stumbling into the kitchen when it’s dark and quiet, turning on my electric kettle, breathing for a couple minutes while the water boils and carefully selecting just the right tea for the day, and then pouring the steaming water over said tea bag. It’s a whole thing. And it’s become as much a part of my day as brushing my teeth.
Earlier this year, I started trying to think of new ways to pray and to incorporate prayer into my day. The idea of praying for specific things at certain times of the day kept popping up, and I thought, why not pray for specific things while I’m doing things that I do every day?
Pray for JP while I put him down for his nap. Pray for Jake while we are snuggling during my alarm-snooze in the morning. Pray for our community and church while I walk the dog. Etc. Etc.
After listening to some wise teachers and reading about prayer, I was challenged to make time to pray a prayer of invitation each morning. To invite God’s Spirit into my day, my home, my heart, my mind, my plans, my interactions. To invite God’s Spirit to reveal sin that needs to be recognized, handed over, and healed, and to reveal truth about who God is and how I’m supposed to live in light of that.
I decided the four to five minutes while my tea is steeping would be the perfect time to incorporate this time of invitation into my day. And then one morning, as I watched the boiling water cover the tea bag and noticed the color of the liquid start to change, it hit me that steeping is exactly what happens to us - in our hearts and in our lives - when we invite God’s Holy Spirit to do his work.
We are all tea bags - each with our own packaging and flavor, purpose and fragrance. But without the boiling water, we remain dry and useless. God’s Spirit is our boiling water. God’s Spirit is the only way to release the goodness that God put inside of us so that we can be good for the world around us.
We were created with purpose, for a purpose. And the way to living a life of purpose is to allow the one who perfectly planned it to reveal it to you. But the revelation comes only after we receive his invitation and send one of our own.
Jesus is God’s infinite and eternal invitation to everyone everywhere to be forever and unconditionally reconnected with the source and satisfaction of our souls. But we must accept his invitation and then invite Jesus to make a home in our hearts forever. God answers our invitation with His Spirit. And although I believe salvation happens once and forever the moment we sincerely acknowledge our sin and accept God’s gift of eternal life through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrected-life; I do believe living the lives we were created to live happens when we make a daily (sometimes hourly) choice to invite God’s Spirit to reveal sin and reveal truth.
“God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” // Romans 5:5
The Holy Spirit is God’s love being poured into our hearts. The Holy Spirit is God’s greatest gift to us, and we are encouraged over and over again to ask for more of it.
The word for “poured” used here is “ekchunno,” and the root word (“ekcheo”) literally means “to pour out.” But this variation of the word implies that what is being poured out is coming from the source. Yes and amen and amen and amen.
God’s Spirit is God - what we are given through the Holy Spirit is God’s presence and power and peace. Not a diluted version, but straight from the source. Which means it will never run out or dry up. God is infinitely and eternally abundant, and his spirit is the same.
What is poured into our hearts when we issue the invitation is the love and power and kindness and creativity and abundance from which we were created. And being steeped in that - in God’s Spirit - is the only way for the goodness that has been placed inside of us to be released. For our unique packaging and flavor to be more than just for show, and for our unique purpose and fragrance to do what they were made to do.