Good inconveniences
The best things in life are often the most inconvenient.
While that may seem a bit sensational, I have come to believe over the past few months that it is true.
A few months ago, I bought a new coffee maker. A very inexpensive thing, but it makes the single best cup of coffee I’ve ever had. It is called a Chemex. It isn’t fancy. In fact, it is analog. You boil your water in a kettle on the stove, then slowly, deliberately, pour the water over precisely ground beans until you reach your desired volume. For a few weeks, I committed to making a “pot” of this stuff every morning.
The problem is that it takes about a half hour to make a measly eight cups of beverage. Since you have to actively pour it from the kettle onto the beans, you can’t multitask. You have to intentionally wake up much earlier than you want, stand in the kitchen for an absurd amount of time and wait. The best cup of coffee is inconvenient.
A favorite dinner in our house is risotto, an Italian rice dish that, when done well, is a little bit of heaven in a bowl. The problem? It takes forever to make, and you have to constantly stir. If you stop stirring, the starches get all messed up, and you get something more akin to wallpaper paste than dinner. The best food is inconvenient.
More examples? One of my favorite expenditures every month is my family’s gift to the church. I love that when I send that check, 20% goes to amazing organizations in the Quad Cities and beyond to change lives. And the rest goes to support the incredible community building and faith fostering work we do here. I’m proud of what my household gives. The problem? Our gifts keep us from some of the nice-to-have things we would otherwise do. Bigger vacations, nicer cars, new furniture. The best expense every month is inconvenient.
One more. Even though I am deeply introverted, I love meeting up with friends. Whether it be dinner, a drink, a quick walk or a round of golf, I love being with my people. But I’m also, as I said, deeply introverted. If I DO go and have fun with my people, I will miss out on some good (and often necessary) re-charge time.
All of our lives are full of things that we know are good for us for a variety of reasons, but in order to do them, we will be inconvenienced in some way whether profoundly or not. I think about the commitment we have of worshiping together. That hour (or more!) on Saturday or Sunday could be spent being productive or resting or used in some other way. But it is important to take that time.
Our time in worship, or prayer, or reading our Bibles isn’t meant to make God somehow happier with us. Instead, those moments are necessary in order to remind us, if even briefly, that we are not in control of much in our lives. God is. And that’s a good thing. If left to our own devices, we probably wouldn’t.
Whatever we want to call it, so much of the joy in our daily lives comes when we open ourselves up to something that forces us to change our view or at least realign our priorities. More money, more time, more rest are all good things, but not if they come at the expense of our encounters with the grace of God in this world and our ability to care for this world that God loves.
Ok, so maybe the best things aren’t inconveniences. Maybe the best things in life happen when we take the time to appreciate all of the amazing ways that God is moving in and around us.
