Can Coffee be a Candidate for Grace?

 

Some folk seem obsessed with how food looks, how tea doesn't look the same as pure water, and how neither does coffee.

The brown color alone puts some people on an anti-coffee bandwagon.

Let's not even talk about the caffeine in coffee putting even a little strain on the heart muscle. And let's not mention that some scientists, historically, got used to associating coffee drinking with people who consume tobacco.

Instead, let's say smokers aren't the only folk who drink coffee, and science has looked closely at non-smoking coffee consumption. And let's say business trends like Starbucks, with sales helping support production in majority black and brown countries, helped bring a lot of folk out of a coffee-is-taboo frame of mind. (Although, Starbucks costs too much.)

And let's say that although coffee isn't right for children, neither is mouthwash; yet many of us as adults do use mouthwash!

Then, after saying all of that, let's weigh coffee against the grace of God we have in Jesus.

Did Jesus pay for our coffee through His journey to the cross? Did He go to the cross with coffee in mind?

Of course, He didn't.

Jesus gave His life with our our individual souls in mind. His grace in so doing has paid for our every need, and has freed us to make choices about at least a few of our wants.

So while a gourmet coffee lifestyle isn't necessarily what His grace has given us, grace certainly does have therapeutic provisions in mind.

And while Heaven doesn't want us dependent on therapy above our faith in Him, I believe God certainly has made the way for responsible coffee drinking. (I just wish a lot of coffee packaging could be a color other than red.)

But Where Is Therapy in Coffee?

While it is kind of well known that green tea and black tea have antioxidants, which help prevent the junk in our bloodstream from damaging our cells, it is not as well known that coffee does a better job at preventing the cell damage we get from that junk -- junk that science refers to as "free radicals."

It sounds new age and flaky to say drinking something from nature helps prevent damage from "free radicals," but that is an honest to Heaven fact of this life.

And, besides that simple fact of the matter, coffee does some other cancer-fighting things for us that science is still trying to understand.

It turns out those cups of coffee on hospital trays don't only to help patients shake away sleep and get acclimated to living more fully each day. Although the coffee bean cannot aid all types of cancer recovery or prevention, it can be an aid in at least some cancer cases and, more importantly, has other health benefits.

Some compounds in coffee may help slow memory decline and have been helpful in some Alzheimer's and Parkinson's cases. One tiny study shows improvements in short-term memory in memory-impaired animals (not because of caffeine's positive effect on brain function, but because of a certain antioxidant in cacao). It's tiny studies like that that have given weight to the great many observational studies science communities have done.

And again at risk of seeming a little flaky, let's say coffee (without sugar) also apparently helps fight diabetes -- a topic for some other day, maybe some other blog.

Just thank God not for coffee, but for providing for us. ...

Can coffee (and can an asthma inhaler) be a candidate for grace? ... No, not exactly; but the coffee drinker, like the asthma patient, can be.