What do a cookbook and a Bible have in common?
As Christmas approaches, one of my favorite holiday traditions has been to bake cookies with my mom and grandmother. The recipes were handed down from my great grandmother who never had a cook book, but always measured ingredients by handfuls for the flour and a pinch or two for salt. Instructions like add water and mix until dough is the right consistency would never make it into a cook book. It’s something she learned by observation. The recipe was handed down verbally probably for several generations until my grandmother asked her mother to write down the ingredients by standard measures like cups and teaspoons in fear of not producing the correct consistency once her mother passed away.
In my pantry, I was gazing on the many cookbooks I have including ones by famous people like Betty Crocker and the Frugal Gourmet. Yes, I know by confessing this, I am dating myself! Some of my other cookbooks include recipes from Mennonites, Brazilians, and Chinese. I even have a Doggie Bone cookbook. But my favorite is my Pennsylvania Dutch cookbook. It’s the smallest one I have, but it contains the recipes my mom made and taught me how to make. It’s a treasure because it represents meals and desserts that we made together as a family.
As I was reminiscing, I was thinking about how the Bible is a lot like a cookbook. Some of the stories were verbally handed down from one generation to the next until someone wrote them down. It has the perfect recipe for life. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” (Matthew 7:12, Luke 6:31) It has the perfect ingredients like steadfast love, abounding grace, perfect peace, confident hope, the power of the Holy Spirit, lasting joy, wisdom, understanding, truth, and justice, not to mention forgiveness, mercy, and generosity. These are the ingredients for a happy life; a life with meaning and purpose; a life which recognizes the sweetness of God’s gift to us in the form of an infant who came to Earth to teach us about the fullness of the Heavenly Realm and what is needed to enter — the gift of faith.
Many people will be hurrying around doing their Christmas shopping this year and many will not stop to realize about the gifts which cannot be purchased and are not tangible. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if whenever
someone would put a gift in their shopping cart this Christmas, they would stop and thank God for the free gifts given to us like our sight, our hearing, the ability to walk, or sing,
have a conversation, laugh, or play an instrument, or sports? It might even give us a different perspective when we’re standing in a long line waiting to check out.
Some of my cookbooks have recipes that I treasure, but the Bible has the perfect measure!