Today my journey of reading in my favorite establishments (read: coffee shops) has brought me to The Flying Bean. This little locally owned coffee house is located in Levis Commons out in Perrysburg, and is in quite an interesting location, as Starbucks is less than a half mile away.
Nevertheless, me being a sucker for locally owned businesses, I chose this place over Starbucks, and was pleasantly rewarded with free WiFi, versus Starbucks paid service. All in all, it’s a nice place, great atmosphere, some of the best coffee house music I’ve ever heard (they must have XM or Sirius, and it’s tuned to some sort of pop-rock station), and of course the coffee is good. My only complaint is that they do not have a Fair Trade or Organic drip-coffee selection, and even for in-house orders you get paper cups, I know I’m picky, but waste-not, want-not!
(Ryanne, I know you’re going to read this… so don’t freak out, it’s all coming out of our grocery budget that I didn’t use!)
Today I got a step closer to finishing C.S. Lewis’ masterpiece, “Mere Christianity.” To say that this book has affected me would be the understatement of… well, at least this week. Through this book I feel God working in my heart and soul more than I can remember in recent history.
Here are some quotes from today’s reading:
- Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man.
- The real test of being in the presence of God is, that you forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object.
- For pride is a spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.
- Do not waste time bothering whether you ‘love’ your neighbor; act as if you do.
Interesting stuff in there today about pride and love. I know for myself that I have a hard time with pride, and it’s quite true that I find myself furthest from God, or my wife when I’m feeling proud. I know I need to work more on forgetting myself. I loved the last quote too… I’ve heard this phrase “act as if” before, and it made a whole lot of sense then, and even more now. Don’t waste time trying to figure out how to love people more, just do it… and if you don’t know how, act as if you do, it’ll eventually come to you.
Brilliant.
