Recipes

My hobbies include cooking and baking. So I read a lot of recipes. I don’t always follow them exactly, but I use them as a guide. That’s the fun of it. Experimenting and creating. And I find it therapeutic to use my skills to make something delicious to serve to my loved ones.

Have you ever considered how many separate ingredients blend together to create the desired result? Some recipes call for more ingredients than others, but it is a matter of uniting and blending. And many of those ingredients don’t taste very good by themselves.

For example, let’s imagine we are baking chocolate chip cookies. My recipe calls for butter flavored shortening. Yuk! Who wants to taste that? Next comes brown sugar and white sugar. Well, that’s a little better. But by themselves, that’s way too sweet and not appetizing. I add a little milk. OK. That tastes good alone. But the vanilla I add next does not. The egg would be fine once it’s cooked. But raw, it’s slimy and disgusting. The flour, salt, and baking soda are very important! But you won’t find me tasing any of that as I add it to the mixture. Now the good part is the chocolate chips themselves. I often substitute or add peanut butter chips, too. Well, it’s nice that there are some yummy parts.

Of course, you get the picture. Some ingredients are delicious, some bitter, some sweet, some blah. But they are all necessary. It’s kind of like life. A combination of all kinds of things that blend together. Too much bitterness and the whole thing is ruined. Too much sweet and we miss the balance of the other flavors. Isn’t it interesting that each of our life recipes are different? Your unique flavor is meant to be special and taste good to those who savor your contribution to their lives. How are you doing?

I pray that God will balance the components of our lives according to His recipe, and that we will allow each part to achieve its intended purpose. Sometimes we are to be sweet, sometimes savory, but alway delicious. Maybe we should apply Romans 8:28 here. “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God” (Holman translation). God is in the blending business. How is that working out in your life?