This summer we鈥檝e had the joy of hosting more family visits in one season than we鈥檝e had over the past several years. It鈥檚 been great! Along with the excitement of their arrival (and near tears at their departure), I鈥檝e also baked more goodies than I have in a long while. Be they muffins, bread, cookies or German specialties, combinations of all sorts of ingredients have produced goods that were both aromatic and delicious. That whole process got me thinking about what went into each item.
What I found most interesting as I thought on that process, was the 鈥渟ameness鈥� of ingredients: flour, eggs, margarine, vanilla and so on. What wasn鈥檛 the same, however, was the end result. For muffins, dry ingredients were assembled while eggs, sugar and butter were creamed in a separate bowl. The two were then put together with a minimum of stirring.
I鈥檒l spare you the details of other items but suffice it to say some were combined differently, others baked at different temperatures or lengths of time or they featured methods such as cream that was whipped rather than merely added. All in all, it reminded me of humanity: we鈥檙e made up of the same kinds of flesh and bones but our personalities are individual. That makes for the potential of great fellowship or extreme loneliness, sometimes and often, a bit of both.
This week our pastor emailed us the following message sent to a church denominational headquarters from a Middle East country. It read like this: 鈥淭here are just two of us but we鈥檙e both believers and we turn our workplace into our church.鈥�
Let鈥檚 never allow our circumstances to make our testimony stale or unappetizing.
鈥溾�beying the truth through the Spirit in sincere聽love聽of the brethren,聽love聽one another fervently with a pure heart鈥�.鈥� 1 Peter 1:22 (NKJV)
