The Coffee Spoon
In the mornings I get up and make my way to the coffee maker. Once the coffee is in the cup, I add a little creamer and stir with a spoon. I do not select just any spoon in the drawer; I have a favorite spoon for stirring the creamer in. This spoon is slightly smaller than our others and bears the stamp of “Air Malta” on the handle. It helps me perform this minor task perfectly.
The funny thing about the spoon is that I don’t have any idea where it came from! It’s got plenty of gentle scratches and dings so it’s not new. A cursory search reveals that Air Malta is an airline that has been around for a while as it was formed in the 1940s, though it has changed names and forms several times since then. I have never flown on this airline (and I would not take one of their spoons) so how it came to be in my drawer is a little bit of a mystery.
This morning, when I picked up the spoon to use in my coffee, I wondered at its life. Where had it flown, who used it before me, not to mention how did it arrive in my house. I wondered who held the spoon previously – who were they and how did their path cross with this little piece of metal? I wonder at the spoon’s adventures; it has likely been to places I’ve never heard of! But, as with many things, its past will remain a mystery to me.
The spoon reminds me that each of us have a history that is largely unknown to others; each of us carries things that others know nothing about. That is, of course, perfectly fine since if we were to tell every other person we meet every single thing about our own selves, we’d never be able to accomplish anything. Plus, we’d likely be exhausted! But it is worth remembering that others wear histories that are invisible to us, and shoulder burdens or elations that we cannot see.
I don’t know who might have used the spoon before it arrived in my kitchen, but I do know that each person who did was beloved by God. Every hand that held it was part of one of God’s most magnificent humans. At every step of this small spoon’s history, God was present, just as God is present in each step of our own lives.
So today, as I hold my spoon in my coffee, my hope is that we can be more curious about one another. I pray we can allow space for the voluminous but largely unseen past that we each carry. And ultimately, we can remember how precious each person is – maybe not immediately to us, but that they are to God.
Perhaps all of that is too much to ask on one spoon to remind me of. But then again, perhaps not – I don’t know it’s history and it is entirely possible that its history is more interesting than I could ever have imagined.
