The Tiniest Teacher

A little lady bug on the wall of my kitchen sink caught my eye as I let the hot water run.

Originally doomed to washing dishes, I found a strange joy in setting out to eliminate the pest of interest. I led the faucet over to his resting place, and viciously squirted the contented intruder to the bottom of the sink. I felt a small measure of satisfaction as it squirmed helplessly among the valleys of the sink mat. Dumb bug shouldn’t be in the house anyway.

A little voice whispered unexpectedly in my head and asked me if I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be that bug. I calmly and quickly told my mite of a conscience to stop bugging me. But I looked down just as quickly, and couldn’t help that I humbly saw myself in that bug. Pretty pathetic, isn’t it? I’m going around finding things in common with a bug. But I couldn’t help paralleling my mistakes with the little bugs first mistake of entering my kitchen and second mistake of getting in my sink and in my way.

How many times have I found myself doing something I shouldn’t and before I know it, I’m lost in the forbidden house of my mistakes. It’s a horrible feeling being faced with the consequences that you never thought would catch up with you.

I turned off the water quickly and watched the pool around the bug drain into nothingness. I heard the gurgle of the sink as it swallowed all but the struggling ladybug. It surprised me to see it still hanging on to the dish mat, and the voice in me whispered again to see if I couldn’t imagine myself desperately hanging onto hope when I knew I’d messed up bad and had no one to turn to.

I pityingly reached a finger into the sink, and waited for the bug to crawl onto the flesh of dry freedom. But the bug took a different path, rounding my finger, and barely avoiding a pot hole in the mat. I took another finger and commandingly placed it in front of the him, and was amazed to see that he preferred to detour into a pot hole, rather than accept my once-in-a-life-time mercy. I placed my finger directly in front of the bug, and was pleased to see him struggle up from the valley and onto my finger. A pretty spunky bug if you ask me. He, helpless in my hands, resigned himself from the dish mat’s valley to the steady slope of my finger. I took him outside, gently released him onto a stone in the garden, and felt immense satisfaction at my good deed. But, I couldn’t stop thinking about the audacity of that voice to compare me to a bug. It was hardly a professional evaluation. But it still made me think.

People are funny. We all mess up, and then when someone does something a little dumber than us, we all look at them like somehow we are far above making that same mistake.
We get into some of life’s worst virtual houses and open the door to a world of consequences. And when we are washed away with guilt, it seems there is no one to turn to. But as we struggle through the valley’s of our chosen detour, there is One above, who is offering a steady hand of mercy. No one deserves to be rescued from their sin. But God still offers a way of escape.

Most people will gladly look down that sink at the hurting individual and think, “Hah, they deserve it. Let them wallow in their own mess.” But we are all in the same sink, a dish-washing opportunity away from meeting our own just deserves.

I don’t know how many times I’ve dipped as low as I can go, until I finally look up to Jesus, and give it all over to Him. He is always there for me, just like he is always there for you. Never lose hope. If you think He’s trying to kill you, let me assure you he’s nothing like me. If he was, we’d all be in a heap of hot water.

I know a guy right now, who messed up big and really regrets it. I’ve been like everyone else and looked down on him. I’ve treated him like dirt. Ironic: a bug treating someone like dirt.
But now, as I think on it, I know I was wrong. Wrong to doom him forever to a life of mistakes. Wrong to lift myself up and tell myself he deserved going down with his bad choices.
Everybody messes up, and at one point or another in our lives, every one of us gets burned, but no one - NO ONE is beyond hope. The more mistakes you make, the more mercy God offers.

I can’t be glad for my friend when he goes down. I can only listen to Christ in me, and offer my hand, or a finger if it helps, and hope he’ll take it. I have not lost hope in him. I only lost my faith in Him.

It’s rather humbling to realize that I needed the tiniest of teachers - a simple bug to help point my self-righteous eyes to the real Judge in life. If He can have mercy on me, He can have mercy on anyone.

So wherever you are in life, look up, have faith, and from one bug to another - even in darkest of times, never give up.

The Recipe for making a woman hate you

I just ran across some old recipe cards of mine. I hate it when someone begs me to please write down my recipe for them because obviously I made something to-die-for, and then when I painstakingly hand-write the whole recipe time after time, I can't remember who asked for the recipe in the first place. Or, if I do remember the person, they look at me funny when I hand it to them and go, "What's this? Oh... right. Thanks..." like they really didn't want the recipe after all.

I'd say this is just a woman thing, but they say some of the best chefs in the world are men....

Really, with a title like the one I chose, I could really make this article more interesting. Yes, I could take a lot of liberties. I don't even know if I want to. Hmm... Maybe I'll sleep on it. I tend to be more on a man-hating binge in the morning.

I slept on it. Twice, in fact. So if you're a guy, you'll probably want to perk up at what I'm about to tell you. Now, I'm not ALL women, so I can't speak for every freak of nature, but for the most part, my annoyances with men involve universal feelings. Please note: This is not because men in general are stupid or lazy. It just means that men and women are different, and most men don't understand this.

So, if you don't want to get a woman to despise you - like literally hate seeing your face, here are some things you never say:

"Please don't talk right now."

You know, honestly, I can't think of anything else! I'm either experiencing writers block or I really don't have a bitter soliloquoy for men. Maybe that comes later in life, eh? Hmm. So I'm told. So I guess I'll revise this articel later in life. There. I feel much better now.

Unavoidable Hazards of the Kitchen

-The first fatal session with boiling water
-Trying to jam a cupboard closed and having all the pans tumble out upon oneself
-Piling the dishes so high in the rack that one can’t touch, much less seek to dry them
-Getting just a LITTLE egg yolk in the egg whites
-Stains on white outfits
-Dishwater splashing up like a reversed water-fall when one tries to dump it down the sink
-Too much garlic
-Getting a phone call and forgetting about the delicacies in the oven
-Bad berries in a berry cobbler
-The occasional hair clinging to the muffin
-Making morning coffee taste like weak tea
-Smoke setting off the fire-alarm
-Making a dish meant for a purpose other than the male members of ones family