I will be the first to admit that I am not a
very good cook. It is not for lack of
trying. My kids often remind me of some of my efforts to create culinary
sensations. Perhaps my most disastrous meal was an ill-fated attempt to make au
gratin potatoes. The recipe called for milk. We did not have any milk in the
refrigerator, but I saw a can of sweetened condensed milk in the cabinet and
decided to use that instead. In my naiveté, I wrongly assumed any milk would
work. As you can imagine, it did not turn out so well. Imagine candy flavored cheesy
potatoes! Yes, it tasted as bad as it sounds! I think my kids only ate one bite.
My brave sons might have managed to get two bites down. But the whole family
realized pretty quickly that it was not a combination of flavors that we were
going to be able to consume. The whole concoction ended up in the trash. And my
kids have never let me forget it!
While that was definitely my worst culinary
disaster, there were many more. I guess I am a bit thick headed and have to
learn the hard way. In retrospect, almost all of my cooking disasters were
because I was missing one or two ingredients for some recipe I was trying.
Instead of going to the store and getting what I really needed, I would either
leave those ingredients out completely or substitute something that I thought
would taste the same, but it never did.
Though I have never really learned how to
cook well, along the way I did learn an important life lesson. We need the
right ingredients for a meaningful life. When we leave something important out,
or when we try to substitute something else for what we really need, life just
never works out like we had hoped.
God’s Word has given us a recipe for living a
meaningful and fulfilling life. As we study it and apply it to our daily lives,
it gives flavor and meaning to our relationships, our activities, our goals and
our dreams. But when we start ignoring things we read in the Bible or when we
try to substitute something in the place of what God’s Word tells us, it always
ends up in a mess. How many times do we have to make the same mistakes over and
over and over again before we start following the recipe of life that God has
given us?
As we start this new year, perhaps it is time
to make a commitment to get back into God’s Word and return to living by the
principles found in it. Those ingredients will make a great life.
Lord, help us find fulfillment in following
Your Word in our lives instead of substituting the things of this world. Amen.
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Dr. Terry W. Dorsett serves at the
Executive Director of the Baptist Convention of New England. He has been a
pastor, church planter, denominational leader and author
in New England for more than 20 years. He is a
happy husband, a proud father and adoring grandfather. He is a
cancer survivor and believes that God works powerfully through times
of suffering. He writes extensively and you can find all of his books at:
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