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# The coffee was ready
- URL: https://www.rubyskitchentable.com/the-coffee-was-ready/
- Published: 2026-08-03T10:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-03T09:59:59.000Z
- Author: Ruby Hayes
- Tags: devotional, Week 11, #080

*"Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer."* — Romans 12:12

The coffee was ready before I was this morning, which happens sometimes when the timer does its job and I do not do mine.

I sat down and the kitchen was still dark and the list was in the journal where I left it and I opened to the page and looked at the names. There are mornings when the list feels like work. When each name is a weight you pick up and set down and pick up again. This was not one of those mornings.

This morning the names were just names. I said them the way I say good morning to Biscuit, which is to say I said them because they were there and because saying them is what I do. The prayer was not large. It was not the kind that leaves you wrung out. It was Monday, and the prayer was Monday-sized, and that was enough.

I prayed for Becca. I prayed for Dan and the children. I prayed for Hannah, who I have not heard from in a week and a half but who is fine, I am sure, because Hannah not calling is not the same thing as Hannah not being fine. I prayed for the woman at church. I prayed for Edna's hip, which has been bothering her since June, and for Pastor Holloway, who looked tired last Sunday.

August has started. I can feel it in the house, in the way the light comes through the kitchen window a few minutes later than it did at the beginning of July. The summer is not finished but it has turned a corner. The garden is still giving. There is plenty left to do and none of it needs to be done this morning.

I finished the list. I closed the journal. Biscuit was on the porch where he always is, and Junebug was asleep on the windowsill in the spot where the sun hits first. I drank my coffee and I sat there for a while longer and I did not think about anything in particular.

There is a kind of prayer that is just sitting. No words, no list, no asking. Just the morning and the coffee and the quiet of the house before the day begins. I have come to trust this kind more than the kind that tries too hard. The trying is not the point. The sitting down is the point.

*Lord, thank you for the mornings that do not ask anything of me.*