When You Know Better, Do Better
Several months ago, I purchased a drip coffeemaker. I was so excited, and it makes awesome coffee. Until it didn’t.
Last week, I brewed a pot of coffee, except this specific morningdid not go as usual. The coffee was brewing, but not dripping into the carafe below. After a few feeble attempts of trying to get it to function properly, I had to leave the house, and did not have time to solve the issue. When I returned, I tried again. The waterwas stuck in the filter where you place the coffee grounds. It was a mess, and the more I tried to fix it the more of a mess I made.
Thinking my coffeemaker was broken I made one more attempt. As I carried the entire coffeemaker to the sink, coffee spilled out everywhere, I was wondering who designed this thing and what were they thinking. I removed the coffee grounds filter and could see that in the process the water and grounds hadoverflowed the filter and coffee grounds were now clogging the opening where the brewed coffee would drip through and into the carafe. Finally, I think the problem is solved! Not quite.
While I am performing Olympic gymnastic quality endeavorstrying to clean this appliance in my sink (unsuccessfully) and getting very frustrated as I continue to make a mess, I see something I had never noticed, a tab. I look and give the tab a pull. The whole basket that is clogged, lifts out easily. What is now in my hand, I can easily hold under the running water and rinse it clean and remove all the grounds that were clogging up the opening. What was taking me hours took moments with no mess, the clean-up was quick and easy, and the whole coffeemaker was working right as rain.
My coffeemaker was not broken, nor was it poorly designed, and I didn’t even need to put my entire coffeemaker in the sink. It needed a good cleaning, done the right way. The problem was I did not know how to 1. recognize the issue, and 2. properly clean my coffeemaker. In this moment, I was reminded of the words spoken by another in house, “When you know better, do better.” So, I did. Now I know, if this happens again, what to do and how to do it.
My encouragement today is do not become discouraged or frustrated. Walk, and when you know a better way to walk, do so. This may easily have been passed off as a silly moment of frustration unless I was seeking and my eyes were open by the Spirit. The moment may have seemed mundane and inconvenient to most but to me, the lesson learned here can be applied again and again to mature and grow.
Instruct the wise, and they will be even wiser. Teach the righteous, and they will learn even more. Proverbs 9:9