Category Archives: Thankfulness

Come and eat!

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Wise women have said the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach. I believe it.

When Nate and I got married, he came to me from a childhood of enjoying the creative cooking of his mother, Lois. She had a lavish cook book collection and used it often. As a newlywed, I realized I’d have to learn to cook if I was going to make my man happy.

Fortunately there was an effective buffer between Lois’ high-class dinners and my incompetence in the kitchen: university food.

Nate’s memory of those home-cooked meals dimmed as he ate in college dining halls from 1963 until we married in 1969, and his expectations were wonderfully low.

After 40 years of cooking thousands of meals for him, I remember only one word of criticism. I’d made a teriyaki stir fry, one of his favorites, but the sauce had turned out thin. Because it wouldn’t stick to the veggies or meat, I used a tip from Mom, adding a bit of corn starch to thicken the juices.

When Nate came to the table, he saw what we were having and said, “Mmmmm. Stir fry!”

We all sat down, heaped food on our plates and dug in. Nate had already eaten three forkfuls by the time I took my first. “My word!” I said. “What’s wrong with this stuff?”

That’s when Nate’s criticism came. “I kept trying, because I couldn’t believe it tasted so awful. What did you do to it?”

“I have no idea,” I said, walking my plate toward the disposal. That’s when I noticed the corn starch on the counter. Unfortunately, it was really baking soda. How I’d mixed up an orange box with a white can I’ll never know. But after we’d all enjoyed frozen pizza, we had a good laugh over my error.

Although I never became a skilled cook, I did learn one valuable principle preparing meals for a big family each day. More important than flavor, smell, ingredients or presentation was volume. Everyone was happier with a full stomach, and filling them up became my #1 priority.

Nutritionists might label that eating-suicide saying, “The food pyramid should be #1.” But my experience was that not having enough was worse than having only some of a perfectly balanced meal.

This principle works well with our spiritual eating, too. We can hold out for a gourmet meal: a peaceful place to read the Bible, a notebook to write in, a pen that works and a set of commentaries. We can wait to pray until we’re sure of uninterrupted time. But if we do, we’ll always be on the edge of spiritual starvation without enough to eat.

God is well aware of our fast-paced lives but creatively delivers spiritual nourishment as our appetites for him grow.

Scripture refers to its words as milk (for beginners) and meat (for the more advanced) and encourages us to taste it. So apparently the old adage does have some truth to it: the way to a person’s true heart is indeed through the stomach.

“Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” (John 6:27)

By the Light of the Moon

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When Mom and Dad were newlyweds in the early 1940’s, Dad was called 1000 miles away on a rare business trip. Mom could hardly stand the thought of him leaving but came up with an idea. At 10:00 each night they’d both step outside and look up. As Mom put it, “Our eyes will meet on the moon.”

When we were kids and she told this story, I thought she was crazy. Later, in high school Latin class, I learned the word luna meant moon, and Mom’s story became the perfect example of lunacy.

Rumor has it when the moon is full, women go into labor more often and traffic accidents increase, along with irrational behavior of all kinds. I don’t know if that’s true, but science has confirmed something that is: the moon affects ocean tides. I suppose if it can pull on sea water, it can probably mess with the water in our brains, too.

Each month when the moon is full, I look forward to Jack’s midnight walk. If the sky is clear, I don’t even need a flashlight, especially during the winter when the trees are bare. Moonlight illuminates the road just enough to see. But when snow covers the ground, moonlight bounces off the white surface so brightly, it casts shadows much like the sun except that the neighborhood glows in silver.

God wants us to appreciate what he’s made. He doesn’t want us to love the moon, stars or sun to the point of worship and makes it clear such adoration is wrong. But he does want us to notice and attribute our amazing world to his doing.

I wonder how it must have been for God just before he created the Universe with its phenomenal heavenly bodies. Did he spend time planning what he was about to do? Did the Father, Son and Spirit enjoy round-tabling ideas about the not-yet-formed heavens and earth? Because God is someone who works in microscopic detail as well as in mega-ways, I like to think he enjoyed the whole process, anticipating, planning and doing.

If he approached the heavens and earth with eagerness, what must he have thought before making human beings? Although we’re like grains of beach sand compared to stars, sun and moon, we’re not insignificant to God. As a matter of fact, he sees us as the high point of his creation, the only thing eternal. He gave us each a soul, and in this we’ve been made “like him,” an astonishing reality.

It could be that the moon serves as God’s object lesson for us, not as a nightly link between separated newlyweds but as an example of reflection. Just like the moon mirrors the sun, we’re to reflect our Creator, a challenging assignment but a most worthy calling.

“When I look at the night sky and see the work of your fingers—the moon and the stars you set in place—what are mere mortals that you should think about them, human beings that you should care for them?” (Psalm 8:3-4)

Coming Up Short

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At my house we’re still working with an ancient fuse box and the glass screw-in fuses. Since we had circuit-breakers at our last house, moving to the cottage brought an electrical learning curve. At first I couldn’t tell if a fuse was blown or good, and it was a guessing game trying to link their power with the area of the house they controlled. But gradually our fuse box and I became friends… until last summer.

My electric water heater would work fine for a couple of weeks, then go cold. I’d head to the basement, replace a couple of fuses, and it would work again, until a few weeks later. One day while at the hardware store buying fuses, I presented the dilemma to the clerk. “Are you using the right number?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, “two of them.”

“No, I mean the number on the fuse. They have different strengths. Check your fuse box. Sometimes it says.”

And sure enough, I’d been using 20’s in two holes needing 30’s, shorting on power to the water heater. After I corrected my error, all was well. If only life’s other shortages were as easy to repair: shortages of sleep, money, patience, energy, wisdom, all kinds of things.

Each of us has felt pinched in specific ways from time to time. For example, every new parent knows about sleep shortages and later learns about patience shortages when their children test them.

Nate and I had financial shortages for many years. Families in other countries find themselves short of food or medicine. People in jobs that require creativity find themselves short of ideas, and those needing physical strength in their work become short of energy.

But the worst deficiency is when we feel shorted by God, that he hasn’t come through like he said he would. We claim his promise to provide for our needs and wonder why we’re short on cash. We put him first, believing he’ll direct us, then wonder why we’re unemployed.

I’ve found it helpful not to look at the current-day shortage but rather at a past provision. It’s the manna principle. God told the hungry Israelites to collect only enough for “today”. If they picked up extra (except before the Sabbath), it rotted.

That’s often how we define our shortages. We say, “I made it through today but know I won’t have enough for tomorrow.”

If we apply the manna principle, we’ll focus on the first half of that sentence rather than the last. Manna always came just before it was needed. Anxiety over “tomorrow’s” food was wasted worry.

Today Skylar asked me for some juice. I knew she’d only want half so filled her cup that much. As I handed it to her, she threw herself on the floor and cried, “No! All the way full!”

I filled it to the top, thinking she must be thirsty, and handed it to her. She said, “Thank you,” and skipped off to play. Later I found her cup. She’d drunk only half.

“The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing.” (Ecclesiastes 1:8b)