TEMPER THE HEAT

5/10/12 Each morning Mother always made her tea for the day. Right in the glass pitcher. She taught me  to make perfect tea by adding the sugar while the water was hot. (We never called it "sweet tea," it just always was.) To keep the glass from breaking, she always put a table knife in the pitcher and would pour the water so that it hit the knife first. I guess that somehow dispelled the heat.

I was reminded of this today as I read a “keep your spoon in the cup” incident described by the author in Surprised by Oxford, as her former professor was encouraging her, a “new” believer.

Keeping the spoon in the cup keeps the china from cracking under the heat, she explained…..The metal of the spoon becomes a conductor, protecting the delicate china from extreme in temperature.

You need to keep the spoon in the cup, Caro….especially when things get hot. God lifts us up, but He also grounds us. Fear will get into the cracks; fear ultimately is what breaks us apart. (Weber, 289)

I mulled my mother’s teaching with Weber’s analogy and some needed “fear” related verses. Mulling, Joshua 1:9, Psalm 16:8, Psalm 27:1-3, Isaiah 41:10, John 14:27, II Timothy 1:7 & Hebrews 13:6, as I drank my English tea in my Hadley stoneware mug from KY. What a combo!

Dispelled. Dispersed. Diffused. All good action words for tempering heat. Heat that comes from struggles and fear. Fear that will crack us wide open if we don’t allow the truth from God’s word to infuse us and thus diffuse the heat that can break us.