Some things are just not supposed to happen.  Sooner or later you will have a flat tire.  Sooner or later your AC will quit on you.  Sooner or later the washer will stop washing and the dryer will stop drying.  None of these things are pleasant, but they all happen to everyone.  When it happens, you groan and then get on with the business of life.  But some things are just not supposed to happen.

I was putting some things in the refrigerator the other day.  Usually the door swings shut by itself, but this time, as I twisted to get the next item, it swung all the way open.  Then it quietly fell off its hinges and tumbled shelf side down, dumping pickles, olives, ketchup, three kinds of mustard, Worcestershire and soy sauces, homemade jelly, butter, cream cheese, and my super special ordered-from-California eye medicine onto the floor, leaving the rest of the refrigerator wide open and humming.  For a moment I just stood there, stunned.  We have been through several refrigerators—a couple of cheap ones that came with the apartment or trailer we were renting at the time, and a couple of secondhand ones.  But this one was a recommended model we bought new.  Never have we had a refrigerator door fall off, not even the inexpensive or used ones.  Refrigerator doors do not fall off. 

Don’t you know that is how God feels at times?  We can find several passages where he laments our actions, saying, “This is not supposed to happen,” at least in substance, if not verbatim.  James 3:10 is a prime example:  Out of the same mouth comes forth blessing and cursing.  My brothers, these things ought not so to be.  James tells us we should not bless God and then curse man because when we curse a man made in the image of God, we might as well be cursing God.  Yikes!  That puts another spin on it, doesn’t it?  Understand, we are not talking about using four letter words here, but about maliciously wishing evil upon a person.  We are not supposed to do it--not even to other drivers!  And James acts like we ought to know this without being told:  we should not be cursing men! 

Unfortunately, we do not know, or willfully ignore, many such things.  We should know God is our Creator and worship him, but for some reason that is hotly debated even among intelligent people.  We should know God’s law; he has made it available and easy enough to understand.  But even in the church we have “seasoned” Christians who cannot find their way from Acts to Habakkuk without getting lost somewhere in Ephesians, and who think John wrote several “Revelations.”

I wonder if God does what I did the other morning, stand there in shock, staring at a door-less refrigerator, with my mouth hanging open, thinking, “What?  That just doesn’t happen.”  Unfortunately, it does.  You wonder if God is really all that surprised any more.  Tell you what, let’s work on a real surprise for him—let’s make sure we don’t do any of those things from now on.

The ox knows his owner, and the ass his master’s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not consider, Isa 1:3.

Yes, the stork in the heavens knows her appointed times; and the turtledove and the swallow and the crane observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the law of Jehovah, Jer 8:7.

Dene Ward

Everyone who cooks on a budget knows what filler is.  If you called things by the order of their ingredients, I served my family dumplings and chicken, spaghetti with sauce and meat, and potato and beef stew.  At times it should probably have been called loaf meat instead of meat loaf.  Even now the two of us split a chicken breast between us or share one pork chop, then load the plate with “filler.”  Filler is the cheap stuff, the stuff that costs a minuscule amount of the protein on the plate, but fills up the eater twice as fast—potatoes, rice, noodles, bread. 

Sometimes we treat certain verses in the Bible as filler.  We skim the genealogies and miss relationships and facts that would open up the ‘more interesting” parts.  We treat the addresses and farewells in the epistles the same way.

All who are with me send greetings to you. Greet those who love us in the faith. Grace be with you all, Titus 3:15. 

I was working on some class material on faith when I read that passage and nearly skipped over it as useless.  Then I found an alternate translation, one of those I seldom look at because they are just a bit too loose, but it opened my mind to the possibilities in this verse.  Greetings to you from everyone here. Greet all of our friends who share in our faith. I pray that the Lord will be kind to all of you! (Contemporary English Version)

Look at that middle sentence:  Greet all of our friends who share in our faith.  Now read the other one again. Greet those who love us in the faith.

How many of your friends and neighbors will tell you that you can be a Christian without participating in what they sneeringly call “organized religion?”  What they mean by that is they can have faith in God without having to worry about being members of a church, answering to the ordained authority in that church, or being obligated to serve anyone else in that church.  Yet Paul told Titus that part of being in the faith was recognizing (greeting) the others who share that faith with you, those who, because of that shared faith, love you. 

Those friends will tell you, “Of course I love people,” but John said, “Let us not love in word or in talk, but in deed and in truth,” 1 John 3:18.  You can’t sit at home in your easy chair and love anyone.

The New Testament tells us in passage after passage that our lives are judged by how we treat “one another.”  Love one another, we are told.  Be at peace with one another.  Welcome one another.  Instruct one another.  Wait for one another.  Care for one another.  Comfort one another.  Agree with one another.  Serve one another.  Bear one another’s burdens. Be kind to one another and forgive one another.  Bear with one another.  Submit to one another.  Encourage one another.  Show hospitality to one another.  Confess your faults to one another.  Consider one another.  Exhort one another.  Do good to one another.  I defy anyone to do these things outside the fellowship of a group of people.

And I pity anyone who has not experienced the joy of bumping into a brother or sister as you run your daily errands, who has not felt instant camaraderie with people you have never met before when you walk into a meetinghouse in an unfamiliar city, the absolute sense of haven and relief that spreads through you simply because you and someone else are bound by the grace of God.  As Paul seems to imply in that “filler” of a verse, it cannot help but affect your faith.

…and the Lord added to the church daily such as were being saved, Acts 2:47.

Dene Ward

I put the cup of coffee down in front of Keith and he looked at it disdainfully.  “What are you?  A waitress?” 

You see, I hadn’t filled it to the brim.  Since, just like a waitress, I had to carry it from the kitchen to the table, to have done so seemed impractical to me.  Despite another snide comment about “a half-full cup of coffee,” it was plenty full for carrying, about a half inch from the top.

Everyone knows what happens when you fill something to the brim and then try to carry it—it sloshes out all over the place.  In fact, whenever Keith fills his own cup, I wind up wiping coffee rings off the table and counter, and splashes in the floor because he fills it to the top.  Filled to the brim is fine when you don’t plan on carrying it anywhere—for most things, anyway.

…And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith…, Acts 6:5.

Stephen is the perfect example of a man filled to the brim with faith.  It sloshed out all over everyone who came near him.  How can you tell?  Just look at Acts 6 and 7.

Because of being full of faith, he was also “full of the Spirit and wisdom,” 6:3.  Notice:  this was before the apostles laid hands on him, 6:6, so we don’t have that excuse for a lack of wisdom and spirituality.  We can have those things too if we are filled to the brim with faith.

Because Stephen was full of faith, no one could “withstand him” when he spoke, 6:10.  And how did he speak?  He knew the scriptures.  From start to finish, he told his listeners the history of Israel, 7:1-50.  Could we come even close?

He was unafraid of confrontation, 7:51-53.  He never ran from opposition, even when it became clear he was in physical danger.  Discretion, according to Stephen, was cowardice, not valor.  We are often full of excuses for not speaking, instead of enough faith to speak out.

Stephen was completely confident of his salvation, 7:59.  He knew the Lord was waiting to receive him.  He didn’t flinch from saying so, and certainly never hemmed and hawed around about “maybe going to Heaven if he was good.”  He kept himself so that there was never any question, and his faith was probably no more evident than in that one statement, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”  Can we make the same statement?

His faith also showed by his forgiving others.  Just like the Lord he followed to death as the first Christian martyr, he asked Jesus to “lay not this sin to their charge,” 7:60.  The disciples recognized their own need and begged for more faith when Jesus told them they had to forgive over and over and over, (Luke 17:3-5).  Here is the proof they were correct—a man “full of faith” forgave his own murderers.  Can we even forgive the driver in the next lane?

What are you spilling on people?  What completely fills your heart and mind every day?  Is it politics?  Is it the latest Hollywood gossip?  Is it the stock market?  Is it complaints about anything and everything?  Is it the weaknesses of your brethren, and any slight, imagined or real, they might have done to you? 

Whatever we are full of will slosh out all over everyone who comes near us.  If we are full of faith, our lives will show it.  Don’t be a waitress when you fill your cup.

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope, in the power of the Holy Spirit. And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish one another. Romans 15:13-14

Dene Ward

I grew up watching my mother use her cast iron skillet.  She fried chicken, hamburgers, eggs, country fried steak, pork chops, and hash in it.  I suppose I began with grilled cheese sandwiches, something I still love but have to limit now.  Some days, though, a crisp on the outside, gooey on the inside, hot all over, buttered pair of bread slices (usually multi-grain in a nod to health) is the only thing that will satisfy.

When I received my own cast iron skillet as a wedding present I was confused.  My mother’s was deep black, smooth and shiny.  This thing was the same shape, the same heft, but gray, dull, and rough.  “You have to season it,” she told me, and even though I followed the directions exactly, greasing and heating it over and over and over, it was probably ten years before my skillet finally began to look like hers.  Seasoning cannot be done quickly, no matter what they say, and in the early stages can be undone with a moment’s carelessness—like scrubbing it in a sink full of hot soapy water.  A good skillet is never scrubbed, never even wet, but simply wiped out, a thin patina of oil left on the surface.     

Faith is a little like a cast iron skillet—it has to be seasoned.  Let me explain.

In the middle of some study a few weeks ago I made a discovery that made me laugh out loud.  “…the churches were strengthened in the faith,” we are told in Acts 16:5.  I am not a Greek scholar, but sometimes just looking at a word gives you a clue.  The word translated “strengthened” is stereoo.  “Stereo?” I thought, automatically anglicizing it, and a moment later got the point.  Faith may begin as “mono”—undoubtedly the Philippian jailor who believed and was baptized “in the same hour of the night” had a one dimensional faith.  He hadn’t had time to develop beyond the point of “I believe that Jesus is the Son of God,” but I imagine after awhile he had seasoned his faith with layer after layer of growth.  It had become a “stereo” faith.

Think about it.  The Abraham who left Ur at the word of God, giving up far more than we usually realize in worldly goods and prominence, was not the same Abraham who offered his son over forty years later.  That first Abraham was still so timid he would willingly deceive people about the woman traveling with him.  Yet God did not give up on him, and he did not give up on God.  He grew, adding layer after layer to a faith that eventually made him the father of the faithful.

The Peter who tried to walk on water may have shortly thereafter confessed Christ, but he wasn’t the same Peter who sat in Herod’s prison in Acts 12, and he certainly wasn’t the same Peter who ultimately lost his life for his Lord.  He used all the earlier experiences to season a faith that endured to the end.

It isn’t that God is not satisfied with the faith we have at any given moment, but He does expect us to grow, to season that faith with years of endurance and service.  Seasoning takes heat, and the heat of affliction may be the thing that seasons us.  We never know what may be required, but God expects us to keep adding those layers, to get beyond the “mono” faith to a “stereo” faith, a multifaceted, deeply layered condition, not just a little saying we repeat when we want to prove we are Christians.

How does your skillet look today?  Is it still gray and rough, or have you taken the time to season it with prayer and study, enduring the heat of toil and affliction, and turned it into an indispensable tool, one you use everyday to feed and strengthen your soul?

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! Job 19:25-27

Dene Ward

I have never been artistic.  The best portrait I ever drew was a stick man.  I could never decorate a house.  I have friends who can walk into a store, look at a picture or wall hanging and say, “That would look great over the table in the foyer.”  Would it?  I have no idea.  Good thing we never had a foyer.

The same is true for my cooking.  I could never make anything look like the picture.  In fact, my boys learned to judge the taste of things by how ugly they were.  If it fell apart on the plate when I served it, they shouted, “Oh boy!  This is going to be good!”  Food stylists?  People who actually make a living making food look artistic?  The mere thought of it just confuses me.

I am just as happy to have naturally curly hair.  It will only do what it wants to.  Saves me a lot of trouble trying to figure out what sort of hairdo would “enhance” my features.  Which brings me to the point of all this—true beauty.  When a people become so wealthy they can spend thousands on plastic surgery, worry about whether their teeth are white enough, and spend so much time making a plate look “pretty” that the food gets cold, we have become just a little too worried about how things look instead of how things are.

I came across the passage, One thing have I asked of Jehovah, that will I seek after; That I may dwell in the house of Jehovah all the days of my life, To behold the beauty of Jehovah, And to inquire in his temple. (Psa 27:4)  So I wondered, what is “the beauty of Jehovah?”  It obviously has nothing to do with white teeth, high cheekbones, and hour glass figures.  (Hurray!)

It only took a little cross-referencing to find Psalm 63:2-5.  Jehovah’s power, his glory, and his lovingkindness make him beautiful.  Surely there are many other traits, but those certainly stand out from the various “gods” of the people around the Israelites.  Petty, spiteful, and cruel well describe the idols the Gentiles worshiped, then and even into the first century.  Read the mythology of the Greek gods and you will find the most loathsome characteristics ever attributed to a deity.  How could anyone even think of worshiping such things?  Yet they did, and actively resisted Jehovah, a God of beautiful character who was not unknown to them.

It makes sense then that his people would be judged by similar things.  Deut 4:6-8 tells us that Israel would be judged as a wise and understanding people, whose God was near them and whose laws were righteous.  Are we “beautiful,” a people whom God would be pleased to call his own?  Are we wise and understanding?  Are we righteous?  Is God near us, or do we keep him as far away as possible except when we need him?  Jesus condemned the Pharisees because they were worried more about the outside than the inside—they made pretty plates, but had ugly insides (Matt 23:25,26). 

In general the world is blind to true beauty, whether in a picture, on a plate, or in a person.  It makes sense that they would not consider the gospel beautiful either.  “Foolishness” Paul says they call it.  Just as it takes a hungry man to see the true beauty of a plate of good food, it takes a hungry soul to see the beauty of the gospel.  As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!" Paul quotes Isaiah in Rom 10:15.  Is that what appeals to you?  Or does it have to be some feel good piece of fluff that makes you laugh a lot before it’s worth listening to?

One of these days we will see the beauty of Jehovah, His glory and power.  I wonder how many will think it isn’t beautiful, but horrifying instead, and only because they never desired to see it in the first place.

And even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled only to those who are perishing. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 2 Cor 4:3-4.

Dene Ward

Several years ago, a prominent female politician angered many American women when she answered a reporter about her choice of career over homemaking by saying, “Well I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies.”  Most of us read a sneer in her tone and, as I remember it, her office was inundated with homemade cookies baked and sent by outraged homemakers.

One of the things I decided to do as a homemaker was to keep a cookie jar filled with homemade cookies, and for the most part I have.  Chewy oatmeal raisin, spicy gingersnaps, crumbly peanut butter, sparkly snickerdoodles, decadent triple chocolate, wonderful almond crunch cookies that always surprise people and steal the show, and all those variations of the All-American chocolate chip:  Toll House, Neimann Marcus, peanut butter chocolate chip, double chocolate chip, oatmeal chocolate chip, and death by chocolate chocolate chip.  My boys would come home from their friends’ houses talking about how deprived they were—all they had were Oreos.

My younger son Nathan was especially fond of cookies.  As a toddler, he would pull up a chair to stand in so he could “help” me make cookies—help that usually involved tasting the dough to make sure it was good, and then “cleaning” the beaters.  When he was in high school, I bought him a shirt that said, Life’s Greatest Questions:  Who Am I?  Where Did I Come From?  Why Am I Here?  WHERE ARE THE COOKIES? 

Eventually that chubby, tow-headed, blue-eyed cherub became a long, lean man who went off to college.  The first time he came home he brought a friend with him.  He immediately led the buddy to the counter where the cookie jar always sat.  “See?  I told you there would be cookies.”  Until he married I would bake cookies and save a dozen each week in a freezer bag until I had 4 or 5 kinds, then mail them to him and start all over.  This was one serious cookie connoisseur.  I am not sure what else made an impression on him, but I know he will remember that I loved him enough to make cookies for him.

I am reminded of David after his small army defeated the Amalekites.  Not all of his men were as righteous as he.  Several “wicked men and base fellows” did not want to share the spoils with the men who had stayed at camp, guarding their belongings.  David said, You shall not do so, my brothers, with that which Jehovah has given us…the share of him who goes down to the battle shall be the same as he who tarried by the baggage; they shall share alike, and it was from that day forward a statute and ordinance in Israel.  1 Sam 30:23-25.  David understood the value of those who did the behind-the-scenes work, the jobs others considered less important, and which seldom received glory or recognition. 

Think about Dorcas.  Stephen, the deacon and great preacher, had been killed not long before. James the apostle, a cousin of Jesus himself, would be next.  But who did Peter raise from the dead?  Not the powerful speakers who performed miracles, but a widow who made clothes for the poor, Acts 9:36-42.  Surely God was saying that what we consider small and unimportant tasks are actually some of the greatest of all.

Never underestimate the importance of “baking cookies.”

For whosoever shall give you a cup of water to drink because you are Christ’s, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward, Mark 9:41.

For the recipe accompanying this post, click >> Dene's Recipes page 


Dene Ward

We eat a lot of soup.  It’s cheap, filling, and healthy.  Even a 400 calorie bowlful is a good meal, and most are far less fattening.  You won’t get tired of it because of the nearly infinite variety. 

We have had ham and bean soup, navy bean soup, and white bean and rosemary soup.  We’ve had cream of potato soup, baked potato soup, and loaded baked potato soup.  I’ve made bouillabaisse, chicken tortilla, pasta Fagioli, and egg drop soups.  For more special occasions I have prepared shrimp bisque, French onion, and vichyssoise.  We’ve warmed our bones with gumbo, mulligatawny, and clam chowder.  I’ve made practically every vegetable soup there is including broccoli cheese soup, roasted tomato soup, and lentil soup.  And if you want just plain soup, I have even made chicken noodle.  You can have soup every week for a year and not eat the same one twice.

Not only is it cheap to make, it’s usually cheap to buy.  Often the lowest priced item on a menu is a cup of soup.  I can remember it less than a dollar in my lifetime.  Even now it’s seldom over $3.50.  So why in the world would I ever exchange a bowl of soup for something valuable?

By now your mind should have flashed back to Jacob and Esau.  Jacob must have been some cook.  I have seen the soup he made that day described as everything from lentils to kidney beans to meat stew.  It doesn’t really matter.  It was a simple homespun dish, not even a gourmet concoction of some kind.

Usually people focus on Jacob, tsk-tsk-ing about his conniving and manipulation, but think about Esau today.  Yes, he was tired and hungry after a day’s hunt, but was he really going to starve?  I’ve had my men come in from a day of chopping wood and say, “I could eat a horse,” but not only did I not feed them one, they would not have eaten it if I had.  “I’m starving,” is seldom literal.

The Bible makes Esau’s attitude plain.  After selling his birthright—his double inheritance—for a bowl of soup, Moses writes, Thus Esau despised his birthright, Gen 25:34.  If that inheritance had the proper meaning to him, it would have taken far more than any sort of meal to get it away from him.  As it was, that was one expensive bowl of soup!

The Hebrew writer uses another word for Esau—profane--a profane person such as Esau, who for one mess of meat sold his own birthright, Heb 12:16.  That word means “unholy.”  It means things pertaining to fleshly existence as opposed to spiritual, things relevant to men rather than God.  It is the exact opposite of “sacred” and “sanctified.”  Jacob understood the value of the birthright, and he also understood his brother’s carnal nature.  He had him pegged.  So did God.

What important things are we selling for a mess of pottage?  Have you sold your family for the sake of a career?  Have you sold your integrity for the sake of wealth?  Have you sold your marriage for the sake of a few “I told you so’s?”  Have you sold your place in the body of Christ for a few opinions?  Have you sold your soul for the pleasure you can have here and now?

Examine your life today, the things you have settled for instead of sacrificing for, the things you have given up and the things you gave them up for.  Have you made some really bad deals?  Can you even recognize the true value of what you have lost?  Don’t despise the blessings God has given you.  Don’t sell your family, or your character, or your soul for a bowl of soup.

Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, Phil 3:17-20.

Dene Ward