{"id":4958,"date":"2025-10-13T11:26:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T15:26:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=4958"},"modified":"2025-10-13T11:26:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T15:26:10","slug":"a-slow-promise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/13\/a-slow-promise\/","title":{"rendered":"A Slow Promise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

Countless residents of planet Earth can\u2019t imagine starting the day without a cup of coffee.

What most people have never suspected is that coffee was once a serious spiritual issue within the Catholic Church.

Around 600 years ago, a coffee craze swept the Middle East.\u00a0Muslim mystics discovered that caffeine was an excellent way to stay awake for midnight prayers.\u00a0Coffee became so essential in Turkey that a woman could actually divorce her husband if he didn\u2019t provide sufficient beans.

When coffee finally arrived in Europe in the 1500’s, authorities expressed concern.\u00a0Young men had begun to hang out at newfangled \u201ccoffee houses\u201d \u2013 essentially the Starbucks of the late Middle Ages.\u00a0Their conversations sometime veered toward radical ideas.\u00a0

A number of Italian priests imagined coffee to be a Muslim plot \u2013 a hot, satanic brew that had been conjured up to poison the Church.

Enter Pope Clement VIII, who did something entirely sensible. In the year 1600, he drank a cup of coffee. \u201cThis Satan\u2019s drink is so delicious,\u201d he is reported to have said, \u201cit would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it.\u00a0We shall fool Satan by baptizing it.\u201d

Coffee thus began a long and successful run as the West\u2019s most popular morning beverage.\u00a0Today it\u2019s impossible to picture the average workplace or church fellowship hall without it.

About the same time, as Jesuit missionaries traversed South America, they imported more than just Catholic doctrines. They introduced coffee as a potential cash crop for farmers.

Within a century, two countries were duking it out for coffee supremacy: Brazil and Colombia. As Elena Caro reports in her book Beans of Destiny<\/em>, these distinctly different cultures chose to go distinctly different ways when it came to supplying the world\u2019s java.

Brazil opted for quantity. Before the nation abolished slavery in 1888 (the last Western country to do so), Black Africans toiled on huge coffee plantations. Success was measured by numbers. The picking of ripe coffee \u201ccherries\u201d was accomplished with the utmost speed.\u00a0

Coffee farmers in Colombia, on the other hand, embraced a culture of quality.

Since the Colombian landscape is crisscrossed by the Andean highlands, there\u2019s no room for huge plantations. Small family farms \u2013 each led by a cafetero<\/em>, a proud, hard-working, independent coffee farmer \u2013 became the backbone of the nation\u2019s economy.

That\u2019s the enduring image of Colombian coffee.

It\u2019s promoted worldwide by Juan Valdez, a fictional character who debuted in a whole-page ad in the Sunday edition of the New York Times<\/em> on January 6, 1960. For the past 65 years, Juan and his trusty mule Conchita \u2013 whose saddlebags are always brimming with coffee beans \u2013 have let the world know that there\u2019s nothing quite like Colombian coffee.\u00a0

What\u2019s so special about a cup of Colombian jo?\u00a0

Instead of the industrial coffee \u201cmonoculture\u201d of Brazil, Colombian coffee farms feature diversity. Regionalism of flavor is reinforced by geography, since different farms grow slightly different plants on different slopes. Every bean is selected by hand \u2013 an approach to harvest that fosters patience, precision, and pride.\u00a0

Colombian coffee production is intimately linked to family and community solidarity. Social events, songs, and celebrations have become prime parts of national culture.

It didn\u2019t have to be this way.\u00a0

Colombian farmers could have opted for quick-win-crops like maize or plantains, which offer tangible results and a few coins in one\u2019s pocket in a matter of months. Coffee is different. It takes four to five years to plant and nurture coffee plants \u2013 and there\u2019s no guarantee that such time and effort will pay off. Caro observes that planting coffee is \u201cto invest in a future that might not come.\u201d

Why, then, did so many Colombian farmers become cafeteros<\/em>?

Caro cites the teaching of the Jesuits. Back in the 1700s, they framed coffee farming as a moral discipline. It was like tending the soul, which requires diligence, patience, and never-ending care. Those lessons gradually became woven into the national character.

Colombian coffee represents a slow promise. There will be great results \u2013 if you just hang in there.

The same thing is true when it comes to following Jesus.

The apostle Paul even uses an agricultural motif to describe the promise of the slow-but-steady Christ-pursuing life:

\u201cAnd let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up\u201d (Galatians 6:9).

The best things in life \u2013 including eternal life \u2013 are worth waiting for.

To which coffee drinkers and disciples (often one and the same), will certainly raise their steaming cups and say, \u201cI\u2019ll drink to that.\u201d
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Countless residents of planet Earth can\u2019t imagine starting the day without a cup of coffee. What most people have never suspected is that coffee was once a serious spiritual issue within the Catholic Church. Around 600 years ago, a coffee craze swept the Middle East.\u00a0Muslim mystics discovered that caffeine was an… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4959,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1018,10],"class_list":["post-4958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-coffee","tag-perseverance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4958"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4960,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958\/revisions\/4960"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}