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The Kingdom of Heaven is Like a Wawa Coffee - Thank you!

I wish to draw your attention to three verses of Scripture in Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians:

1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 (NIV)

“Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”

Here is the same verse in the familiar King James Version:

16 Rejoice evermore.

17 Pray without ceasing.

18 In every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.

The Kingdom of Heaven is like giving thanks for my coffee at Wawa’s convenience store. If you do not have a Wawa convenience store near you, you need one. Wawa’s are located primarily along the I-95 corridor in New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, along with a few locations in Florida. In my opinion, they have the best convenience store coffee, and many days due to one promotion or another, I’ve received a free cup of coffee. I know other places have their convenience stores such as Sheetz, Quick-Trip, 7-11 (which was among the few crazy stores open from 7AM to 11PM).

A few years ago, it struck me that someone was making that coffee for me. Of course, I intellectually knew this fact all along. But one day it struck me, someone is taking their time and effort to make me a cup of coffee, and I have never even once thanked, not even one of them, after untold numbers of cups of coffee.

The Lord whispered to me (like my friend Kerry Willis says, “it wasn’t audible, it was louder than that!”) on my next visit to Wawa, to look behind the counter to identify the “coffee maker of the day” and offer some kind word and my expression of gratitude. The very first time it went something like this, “I would like to express my thanks to you for making my coffee for me today. I’m truly grateful. It is a special thing to have someone take such care. Thank you!”

The employee looked up at me; stunned might be a good word to describe her reaction, and responded, “Thank you! It is my privilege!”

And so now for years, and now not only at Wawa, I go looking for the coffee maker to express my thanks. And the interactions have been mostly all joy-filled and wonderful. Thanksgiving goes a long way, perhaps farther than we realize, into the transforming power of God’s grace. Every time I go to Wawa, I am personally reminded of just how far Jesus brought me, how he is changing me, transforming me into His image for me. Gratitude like that, or even the thought of looking for the coffee-maker, much less thanking her, is far from my natural heart. But I believe it is close to the heart of Jesus.

Here we are on the Wednesday before a national celebration of Thanksgiving. We are naturally drawn to the biggest and the boldest and the broadest expression of Thanksgiving – I mean “OF COURSE we can give thanks about that!”

Instead, what my heart is telling me today, is that the kingdom of heaven is found in the thanksgiving we discover in the most mundane. And such thanksgiving is certainly intertwined into this that we call perfect love.

Mother Teresa is quoted often with an expression similar to this: “We can do no great thing, only small things with great love.”

The kingdom of heaven is like this. And for me the kingdom of heaven has now even interrupted my Wawa coffee purchase, as well it should.

Where does the kingdom of heaven wish to intersect your life of gratitude? In the grandiose? In the extraordinary? In the obvious? Certainly, even in the mundane but glorious purchase of your Wawa coffee, too!

And I’m still learning about such gratitude. I am grateful that God is still teaching me. Our 6-year-old granddaughter is off school for the Thanksgiving week. Monday through Tuesday meant a sleep-over at Mimi and Papa’s house. For one hour during that time I had a 45-minute zoom meeting. I thought I had clearly explained the boundary around me not being interrupted, but about 20 minutes in, she started launching a paper airplane my way. After a couple of tries, it landed in my lap. A little flustered, I was ready to mute my zoom mic, go off-camera, and in a grandfatherly way, redirect precious Arabella from distracting me. Before I did so, however, I was drawn to the paper airplane which was spontaneously unfolding in my lap. In the unmistakable handwriting and spelling of a first-grader were these words: “I love you!” So now the kingdom of heaven is like interruptions to a zoom meeting, too!

But don’t just take my word for it. In His commentary on 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 John Wesley offers this:

Rejoice evermore - In uninterrupted happiness in God. Pray without ceasing - Which is the fruit of always rejoicing in the Lord. In everything give thanks - Which is the fruit of both the former. This is Christian perfection. Farther than this we cannot go; and we need not stop short of it. (https://godrules.net/library/wesley/wesley1the5.htm)1

Wesley confirms that this kind of thanksgiving – in everything, in all circumstances, is the result of our happiness in God and the fruit of our ceaseless praying.

So just to be clear, you mean when I was giving thanks for my coffee at Wawa it was an expression of my joy in the Lord and a result of my ceaseless prayer? In my early discipleship I would have said, “I don’t think those things are related” but by HIS perfecting grace I believe that I see that they really are.

Where is the Father calling upon you to give thanks?

 

By: Dr. J. Phillip Fuller, Chair of the NBC Board of Trustees, District Superintendent Virginia District Church of the Nazarene

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1 JOHN WESLEY'S BIBLE COMMENTARY NOTES - 1 THESSALONIANS 5:16

https://godrules.net/library/wesley/wesley1the5.htm

Rejoice evermore - In uninterrupted happiness in God. Pray without ceasing - Which is the fruit of always rejoicing in the Lord. In everything give thanks - Which is the fruit of both the former. This is Christian perfection. Farther than this we cannot go; and we need not stop short of it. Our Lord has purchased joy, as well as righteousness, for us. It is the very design of the gospel that, being saved from guilt, we should be happy in the love of Christ. Prayer may be said to be the breath of our spiritual life. He that lives cannot possibly cease breathing. So much as we really enjoy of the presence of God, so much prayer and praise do we offer up without ceasing; else our rejoicing is but delusion. Thanksgiving is inseparable from true prayer: it is almost essentially connected with it. He that always prays is ever giving praise, whether in ease or pain, both for prosperity and for the greatest adversity. He blesses God for all things, looks on them as coming from him, and receives them only for his sake; not choosing nor refusing, liking nor disliking, anything, but only as it is agreeable or disagreeable to his perfect will.

Published: 11/22/2023

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