Meditation on a Coffee Spill

5:40 a.m. No lights on upstairs. Cup of coffee in one hand, computer tucked under my other arm. Conditions ripe for some kind of disaster.

I should have never tried to walk back to my study without a free hand to grope for the wall and a light switch. I make this walk every morning at roughly the same time. The cup of coffee is a constant too, but not the computer. The trek to the study leads through the guest bedroom, the very room my wife had diligently prepared for friends who would soon arrive for a weekend visit. Everything in the room was ready, including the white bed cover, now freed of the laundry stack that typically concealed (and protected) it.

The darkness was too black to navigate without some help, whether from light or from the slight sweeping motion of my outstretched arm. My plan was simple. I would place my computer on the bed and turn on a light. I moved over toward the bed to put my computer down. At this point I’m not sure where the plan went wrong, simple as it was. As I placed my computer on the bed I heard in the darkness the sound of coffee dribbling on the laundry free white bed cover.

Any early sluggishness of the blood flow in my veins disappeared with the help of a sudden adrenaline surge. The fact that my wife would not be up for nearly an hour gave me plenty of time to do some crisis management. I really have no idea what to do to a coffee stain on a white bedspread. I got a wet towel and did the best I could – which actually turned out to be a decent dissipation, if not removal, of the stain.

In fact, our guests might have never noticed the stain on the bedspread. My efforts at getting rid of it had not been entirely successful, but you wouldn’t see it unless you knew where to look.

But I can see it. I know where to look.

The word “stain” has longed served as a metaphor for sin. This goes as far back as the prophet Isaiah. Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow (Isaiah 1:18). I grew up singing gospel hymns that pictured sin as a stain and the blood of Jesus as the cleansing agent. Several weeks ago I gave my Bible study class a short quiz on these "blood hymns." I asked who could state the entire verse or sentence that went with the following hymn lines.

“There is a fountain filled with blood . . . “[1]
“Would you be free from your burden of sin . . . “[2]
“What can wash away my sin . . . . “[3]

It may seem silly or even banal, my early morning coffee-spill crisis. But I came away from that with a fresh sense of what those hymn writers were talking about and what preachers of a bygone era so eloquently and passionately conveyed from their pulpits.

I recognized that the real stain of sin isn’t visible. The real ugliness of what sin leaves behind is something inward. My spill brought with it feelings of anger and self recrimination (that was such a stupid thing to do). I felt the shame that comes from others knowing what happened (will our guests see this?). I felt the regret of messing up what my wife had worked hard to make nice and presentable. All that stuff was churning around inside of me.

I further recognized that the physical stain can be disguised and hidden – and so can the internal turmoil. By my own efforts at sin management I can remove the stain well enough so that those who look at my life will never really notice the stains. The visible mess is nicely doctored up, and the internal is simply out of view. No one would know anything about it unless they knew exactly where to look.

But I know exactly where to look, and that’s the problem.

Here’s where the good news comes. This is what made hymn writers sing and caused preachers to raise their voices.

The blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin (1 John 1:7).

These are they that have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb (Revelation 7:14).

I still make the early walk upstairs every morning, making my way through the guest room back to the study. I keep one hand free and I turn on a light to show the way. And occasionally I notice the stain (when I look very closely). It’s a reminder. There will be other spills, missteps, faulty moves, careless acts. But a spill can always be trumped by a flood. As the hymn says, sinners plunged beneath that flood loose all their guilty stains.


[1] . . . drawn from Immanuel’s veins. And sinners plunged beneath that flood loose all their guilty stains.
[2] . . . there’s power in the blood, power in the blood.
[3] . . . nothing but the blood of Jesus.