In my humble blogger opinion, this year’s red cups are the MOST Christian Christmas cups Starbucks has ever designed.
Yes – you read that correctly.
I see a cup where they have stripped away all the snowmen and penguins in holiday scarves. Santa is nowhere to be seen. All of the holiday trimmings and distractions have been removed, and we are left with a blank slate. A simple cup of red, as bare and plain as the stable that housed the newborn Lord on Christmas night. Simplicity – a beautiful stand for the heart of Christmas in the midst of a world who seeks to distract us from that holy night.
I see a cup of scarlet red, like the saving blood of the savior who came to earth to die for the creation He desperately loved and pursued. Without the message of His death, we miss the purpose of His birth.
Most importantly of all, a cup that leaves room for everyone at the table is the very embodiment of what Jesus called us to be. We serve a Savior who called Jews and Gentiles alike, and who saved His scorn not for the people who represented a different culture, but for those who misrepresented His. Jesus never commanded us to loudly fight for our rights as Christians, but rather he called us to lay down our own rights in the name of bringing the gospel to those who don’t yet have a place in His family.
I Corinthians 9:19-23 (ESV)
For though I am free from all, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win more of them. To the Jews I became as a Jew, in order to win Jews. To those under the law I became as one under the law (though not being myself under the law) that I might win those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law (not being outside the law of God but under the law of Christ) that I might win those outside the law. To the weak I became weak, that I might win the weak. I have become all things to all people, that by all means I might save some. I do it all for the sake of the gospel, that I may share with them in its blessings.
I see Christ in bare red cups.
#MerryChristmasStarbucks
