Make the Chili
What a wonderful day of worship, Father. Thank You for Your inspiration and most importantly for Your presence. May Your words resonate through our hearts and into our lives. Amen.
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This past weekend, I came across a story that was shared by a friend on Facebook.
A good friend of mine unexpectedly lost his wife. A couple of months later we were golfing together, chatting about nothing. He asked what my dinner plans were, and I told him wifey wanted my homemade chili and cornbread, but I didn’t feel like stopping at the store. We golfed a few more minutes when he quietly said, “Make the chili.”
It took me a few minutes to realize we were no longer talking about dinner. It was about going out of your way to do something for someone you love because they could unexpectedly be taken from you at any moment. So today I’m sharing with you that wisdom handed to me by my dear friend, that I’ve thought of many times since that day. Next time someone you love wants you to go for a walk, watch a football game, play a board game, or just put your phone down and give them your undivided attention, just do it. “Make the chili”
The story, in and of itself, is poignant, but it is even more so because she and I share a mutual friend who lost her life several months ago due to complications from open heart surgery. I was good friends with our mutual friend, but their relationship went to another whole level. I think it went even beyond the level of best friends. They weren’t related but called one other sister. Saying they were close would be a gross understatement.
When asked what the greatest commandment was, Jesus replied in Mark 12:30-31,
And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.’ The second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ No other commandment is greater than these.” NLT
The first is from the Old Testament book of Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and the second is from Leviticus 19:18. They’re not some new-fangled concept. They stood at the very core of what it meant to follow the Creator God of the universe. Simply put we are to love Him and love others.
Sometimes it can be far less complicated to love our “neighbor”. That can be accomplished in any number of ways. Friends might fit into that category as well. And those kinds of relationships are special in so many ways.
But what about those closest to us…our family – spouses, children, siblings, parents. It’s so easy to take them for granted. But as the story so clearly pointed out, there are no guarantees in life. We and our loved ones may live for many, many years or it can come to an end in the blink of an eye. Do not let opportunities slip through your fingers like the sands of time through an hourglass…make the chili.
Aug 27th, 2023, Sun, 9:01 pm
Plain Vanilla
It was a very productive day, Father! Thank You for steering me in the right direction to accomplish so much!
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A friend of mine from Mt. Vernon (Thanks, Thom!) shared this the other day and I wanted to share it with you! He starts off by saying,
Time for a history lesson
Anytime someone uses the phrase “plain vanilla,” as if it somehow means boring or unoriginal. I kind of laugh to myself. Apparently, folks don’t know the real history of vanilla. For starters, it’s the second most expensive spice in the world (#1 is saffron) Vanilla is the only edible fruit out of 25,000 species of orchid! Frankly, it’s a statistical miracle. It requires a special tropical climate to grow, and each flower blooms for, wait for it – one day!
Historically, only kings could afford such a rare delicacy as vanilla.
Not to mention the invention of ice cream itself, which would have required sending an expedition to the mountains to bring back ice during a hot summer. And yet here I am. casually enjoying this frozen dessert flavored with one of the most miraculous spices in the world. You may call it “plain vanilla.” I call it a miracle: Modern life is pretty amazing if you have an attitude of gratitude!
(Check out National Geographic’s The History of Vanilla article for more information!)
What spoke to me in his sharing is the fact that, first, God is amazing, isn’t He? To be that specific with one of 25,000 species of orchids, and then to make man in such a way as to have the curiosity to see what something unknown tastes like! (The first people to cultivate vanilla were the Totonacs in the jungles of Mexico’s east coast, who were conquered by the Aztecs in the 15th century!) The intricacies of God are amazing!
And you and I, we are amazing creations of our Almighty God as well! You might consider yourself a “plain vanilla” kind of person, but you most certainly are not! God knows absolutely everything about you, and warts and all He loves you, far beyond what you could ever imagine!
You are a cherished creation of God Himself. We must not sell ourselves short!
Follow His leading. You may feel like you are off in some no-man’s land, but God knows…God cares… And believe you me, you are the apple of His eye!
King David, in Psalm 17, proclaimed,
Keep me as the apple of your eye;
hide me in the shadow of your wings. v8 NIV
And He surely will! For you are surely no “plain vanilla”!
Aug 24th, 2023, Thurs, 7:33 pm
The Debt of Love
It has been a long and full day, Father. Thank You for the blessings of interacting with so many kids and their families at our school’s Open House tonight. May Your hand be upon us all in the up-and-coming year. Amen.
Romans 13:8-10 (<<click here to read the passage)
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. v8 NIV
The first thing that jumped out at me while reading this verse, was the thought of the continuing debt to love one another.
I have some relatives who have worked very hard to control their debt, the opposite of which was to let their debt control them. Far too many of us are controlled by outstanding debt. In our minds, we must have what others have. And the sad thing is that we let very little stand in the way of getting what we want.
When I worked at Kohl’s, over time, we were more and more driven to solicit credit – shoppers were pushed more and more to open a Kohl’s credit card. At one point in time, we just felt like we were getting more and more people saying “no” because everyone seemed to have one or…they just flat-out refused to get one. Personally, I felt that though people seemed to spend lots of money on things, they were maxed out on their credit. With house payments and car payments, not to speak of school loan debt, they knew they wouldn’t be approved. They had so many things, but they were in debt way over their heads.
What kind of world would we live in, if we took the same approach to mounding up a debt of love? Financial debt is quite often piled up to fulfill our wants and wishes. Love debt benefits others. The Apostle Paul encourages his readers to pile up debt to love one another, and in doing so we fulfill God’s law.
Thinking along those lines reminded me of the lyric of a hymn written by Issac Watts in the early 1700s. The line that came to mind was, “The debt of love I owe” which comes from the hymn, Alas! and Did My Savior Bleed. I grew up with the arrangement by Ralph E. Hudson, more commonly known as At the Cross (ca. 1885).
The entire last verse reads,
But drops of grief can ne’er repay
The debt of love I owe:
Here, Lord, I give my self away
’Tis all that I can do.
With the refrain continuing,
At the cross, at the cross where I first saw the light,
And the burden of my heart rolled away,
It was there by faith I received my sight,
And now I am happy all the day!
We have a continuing debt of love for what Christ did for us on the cross. He paid a debt He did not owe – we owed a debt we could not pay. And when we accept His payment for that debt, the burden of our hearts rolls away, and joy returns! If we do that, we must perpetuate that debt of love by loving others as Christ calls us to, and may He help us to do just that. Amen!
Aug 23rd, 2023, Wed, 9:14 pm
Who Cast the Deciding Ballot?
Father, it is the time set apart for us to come together. May You use this jar of clay for Your glory. As John the Baptist said of You in John 3:30, “He must become greater; I must become less.” Amen.
Romans 13:1-7 (<<click here to read the passage)
This may not be proper for a pastor to say, but when I read through these verses I groaned inwardly. In the world in which we find ourselves, and I really don’t know if the world as a whole is in the same state that we in the United States are in (and honestly, we are united in name only), the division is profuse. It seems that we are divided right down the middle – half for this (and against that) and half for that (and against this!)
I absolutely abhor politics and the mechanics of it all. It is rare for me to talk with anyone about it. I have my opinions and yours may align with mine or may very well be at the opposite pole of polarity.
The first sentence of the first verse from the New Living Translation reads,
Everyone must submit to governing authorities.
In the last 30 years can those of us on the losing side of elections truly say that we have honestly submitted to the governing authorities? I would say that very few can do so. And I am right there with you! When the candidate that I felt should be in power lost, I had very little good to say about the one who had won. I recall thinking that when one particular individual was elected that we deserved what we got. The “evil” that I perceived them to emulate in their life and policies, I truly felt was God giving us our just due for what our country has become on so many fronts.
I was so wrong in a majority of my thoughts at that time but the part that I was closest to being right on is spelled out in the last portion of verse 1,
For all authority comes from God, and those in positions of authority have been placed there by God.
I was close but not spot on.
We must never forget that our Creator God – the supreme God above all other gods – and we have plenty, even in our modern era, is Sovereign over all.
I found this quote by R.C. Sproul on the website of Ligonier.org. The excerpt is taken from What Is the Relationship between Church and State?
If you don’t like the president of the United States, remember that the One who cast the deciding ballot in his election was almighty God. Of course, God doesn’t sanction or endorse everything that the president does; neither is it the case that God turns the authority over to the president and says, “Go ahead and rule these people however you want.” Every king is subject to the laws of God and will be judged accordingly. It may be that the president is completely ungodly, but for reasons known to God alone, God has placed him in that seat of authority.
I don’t know if you are a fan or not of whom God has placed in authority over us but regardless, we are called to pray for and lift up to God whomever it may be today and whomever it will be tomorrow. God is in charge. And no matter who we are…we are not.
Lord Jesus, may we – first and foremost – humbly submit to You as the ultimate governing authority. And then may we step in line with Your will in our lives…that is where Your Kingdom begins. Amen.
Aug 22nd, 2023, Tues, 6:46 pm
