I admire people who can cook. I’ve personally never had much interest in it. Finding a recipe, acquiring the ingredients, measuring, stirring, setting timers — seems like a lot of work.
My idea of cooking is putting something in the microwave and pushing the “start” button. Leaves more time for important stuff, like watching football on TV.
Yet I have a friend who loves to cook, loves the challenge of taking a collection of elements and creating something. He especially takes joy in experimenting, adding a little something extra, something special — something that makes the creation uniquely his.
Rewarding
He tells me there is nothing more rewarding than serving his trademark dish to his family and watching them gobble it up with glee. He revels in glory when somebody remarks, “Nobody makes this like you do.”
It’s kind of weird, but I found myself thinking about cooking when I went through the seven days of creation in the first chapter of Genesis the other day.
God had already made the earth and the stars, the plants and the animals, and it was all good.
It gave Him much pleasure to then take the ingredients and create something special, something that would be uniquely His trademark, His special ingredient to the universe. On the sixth day he created man.
What makes us special? Well, we’re not just chopped liver. We are made in His image.
Joy in serving
We are given dominance over the other living things. When we do something we were designed to do, such as bringing compassion, mercy and service to others, I like to imagine we are providing Him with the same type of joy my friend gets when his family and friends savor his culinary inventions.
There is that line in Psalm 139 that says, “I praise You because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Your works are wonderful. I know that full well.” There it is — confirmation that we are His special sauce.
Good cooking requires hard work and more than a tablespoonful of patience. So does a solid Christian walk.
Maybe these guys who cook are on to something. I’ve even tried my hand at it. I started with something very basic, like scrambling my own eggs. After tasting them it became clear that my cooking, like my Christian walk, is a work in progress.
I’m not throwing away my microwave just yet.
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