The Cup

When someone drinks from a cup, she drinks from something other than glass because--if she drinks from glass--she'll either call that container by the name of its substance, or she'll call it a mug: not, generally, a cup. I prefer to drink from glass: especially wine, also sweet tea and most anything with fizz to it.

A glass seems cleaner, somehow, than a cup. Cups (especially plastic ones) trap odors and stains. Ice doesn't taste so good, out of a cup, as it does from a glass. Perhaps nothing does.

Cups haven't that charming ring when tapped with silverware; they're insufficient for toasts.

Cups melt, sometimes, but they don't tend to break. Cups are safe and--let's face it--childish. Undignified. They're sold in spill-proof varieties. They house Kool-Aid, medicine, pee.

Aside from a few juice glasses and mugs, in this log cabin, we drink from only cups: plastic cups. My husband prefers Big Gulp cups from 7-Eleven. Cade, my 12-year-old, seems to like the tall, skinny black cups with fading owls on them. They belonged to my grandma and remind me of the days when she had her own house, cupboards, cups. The girls drink from sippy cups: Sesame Street, Mickey Mouse, Tinkerbell, various princesses.

I'm indifferent. I drink from whatever cup is clean. I prefer to drink from glass (Were you paying attention?) but suspect that this season of cups is meant to draw me closer to Jesus.

Jesus is a cup man. There are those who would try to capture Him in glass; trap Him in glass; make Him as transparent/dangerous/cutting/fancy-schmancy as glass, but He's a cup man. Scripture bears it out.

"Suffer the little children to come unto me," Jesus says, and I'll tell you the truth: I don't think He minds if the children come carrying sippy cups. Nor do I think He minds if their mommies come running behind with little cups of medicine. Jesus loves little people with sugar highs, Kool-Aid mustaches, medicine breath. He loves, too, the mommies behind them.

Jesus takes the cup; gives thanks; tells His followers to drink His blood out of it. It's shed for the remission of sins, He says.

Jesus loves the kids, the sinners, ordinary (wo)men. He loves us here, in this log cabin, drinking from cups. He's right here. He's a cup man.

**Sharing with Amber, Emily, and their communities.