Schmolocks of Coffee by Ashlee Wong

When a person cannot do anything about something, earthly efforts seems futile, thus surrenders it to prayer.

Prayer, I have heard it touted as the most powerful weapon on earth and beyond. I have heard it being a comfort. I have heard it being a solace. I have heard it being a way to communicate with God. I have heard that it moves God’s hands.

Prayer is a real funny thing though. One seemed to think that it works miracles and wonders straightaway and everything gets better, rather like waving a magic wand and putting everything right.

But prayer instead, puts things into perspective, sometimes straightaway, sometimes slowly, like a movie being played in slow motion, and you notice every little action of the actors.

Would you believe that no prayer and miracles wrought through prayer works the same way twice? Just as no anniversary is the same like last year’s.

I could be drinking latte at Secret Recipe on the 27^th December last year but I was having a hair cut, attending a church service this year on the same date.

Sometimes it’s just so frustrating to NOT see something work, you know. Take a coffee machine, you know it’s brewing and boiling and making your coffee inside, but how?! It bubbles and whistles occasionally. You want to take off the cap and see that it IS making your coffee for you properly and not just making weird noises. And then, the coffee trickles out, slowly, just letting the aroma fill the kitchen. You inhale it, the smell comforting you and you sit down to enjoy the fragrant cup.

But WAIT, you’ve entirely forgotten about your curiosity of HOW the machine worked that mini miracle. How did the coffee beans, the water, the filter and all those schmolocks in that little machine blend all that and came up with the coffee you’re holding now in your cup, perfectly blended?

I don’t know how accurate that analogy was. But I’ll be the one standing on tiptoes and aiming to peep into the machine. I do know that, somehow, that machine will let me have my coffee.

Just like I know that prayer will work a good thing out in the end. But it’s the process and (all that gurgling around in the coffee machine) the waiting that drives me nuts.

Well now smile, you’re pretty sure you’ll be getting that cup of coffee in the end anyhow.