I’ve always enjoyed entertaining. Having family and friends over for a meal and fellowship is one of my favorite things to do. Even though I do my fair share of disposable plates and cups, I really enjoy the china, crystal, candles and table decorations! Bring on the holidays and the opportunity to be creative! A number of years ago, Larry and I invited a special couple over for dinner. He was the principal where our children attended school. She was a great teacher and storyteller. Both were part of our church community.
This couple had taught me a lot about life and family and I wanted to make something special for dessert. Chocolate–pure and simple was the perfect choice! I set about to make my homemade brownies, timing it so they would just come out of the oven as our company arrived. The smell alone of decadent, homemade, chocolate brownies would set the mood for the entire evening. Quickly I readied the last details and put the anticipated dessert in the oven.
Just before the doorbell rang, I opened the oven door to remove the brownies and found the shock of my life. Instead of the blue ribbon brownies I expected, there was a dish of bubbling, black crude sitting in the oven. The smell was deceptive, masquerading as the real thing but the recipe itself looked like the stuff Jed Clampett, of Beverly Hillbillies fame, discovered in his backyard! In all my years of baking this had never happened before. I quickly diluted the hot, bubbling crude and poured it down the disposal. Lucky for me I had a frozen turtle cheesecake I could sub-in for dessert.
The evening ended and I began to retrace my steps in the dessert process and I realized I had forgotten to add the eggs! Eggs serve two purposes in recipes. First, they bind together ingredients and create consistency when used with a variety of ingredients as in a casserole. Secondly, they serve as a rising agent, developing body and volume as when used in a pound cake. Although I had added all the other ingredients, without the eggs it didn’t work!
It didn’t take me long to see the spiritual parallels. All of our Christian efforts cannot produce the right recipe if we don’t make sure we add God’s love. Love binds us together even though we may come from very different backgrounds and may have very different ideas that we bring to the mix. The love of God enables us to develop bulk and maturity as we grow in the heat of life’s oven. Also, the egg is a source of nurturing and life. So is God’s love the very source of life and comfort.
In I Cor.13 we find these words from The Message Bible:
If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I am nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.
If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysterties and making everything plain as day; and I have the faith that says to a mountain, “Jump” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I am nothing.
If I give everything I own to feed the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but don’t love, I have gotten nowhere. So no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I am bankrupt without love.
When you make brownies, don’t forget the eggs! When you live life, don’t forget the love!