All the Lovely Little Bottles

As my sister and I enjoyed an early morning call, as we sometimes do,  my darling husband toiled in the kitchen making breakfast.  Since he’s been on this ‘cancer killing diet’ (over which we’re rejoicing, BTW, since it, along with lots of prayers, seems to have worked!), I’ve been making up a concoction of dried chick peas, nutritional yeast and some spices, which, if you squint your eyes and taste buds, looks and tastes remarkably like an omelet.  This has become Tony’s “Award Winning” specialty, along with his famous Texas BBQ (to which sadly, we’ve found no plant based substitute).

We sat down to enjoy the repast, but alas… Now, I’m not one to spit out food, but this time I had to make an exception. It tasted like PURE SALT!  

I did my best to soldier on, trying not to offend the cook, all the time asking pertinent questions like “What exactly did you put in this magnificent omelet?” or, “Was your head with you the entire time?”  Finally we both had to give up.  He hurried to the kitchen just as I was wondering if this was what early onset dementia looked like. 

“You won’t believe this!” he said with a look of triumph. “I grabbed the jar next to the omelet mix in the dark.  That jar was full of my powdered barbecue rub!”

Problem solved.  I remember a famous preacher once confessing that while his wife was running errands one day, he helped himself to some garlic bread, lavishing it generously from the bottle of olive oil, which fortuitously happened to be sitting right there handy by the sink.  Being a man, he gutted thru several slices while he watched the game.  When his wife came home, he confessed that he didn’t particularly like the flavor of the olive oil, to which she smiled and said lovingly (as wives sometimes do),  “That’s because the pretty olive oil bottle is full of dishwashing liquid!”’

Fortunately for us in the case of the omelet, only our blood pressure will suffer.

Now it’s a week after the great news I shared with you last time, and I know I need to get some perspective.  I was reading this morning how we Christians are often like spoiled children when we get a ‘miracle’.  You know, those times when your kids are sick, and for lack of anything else you can do, you pamper them with ice cream and cartoons.  

Eventually, they get better, except that now they’re little monsters, demanding the same treatment as before. I can’t help but see a bit of myself in that picture.

This week we have experienced no special miracles, other than the fact that we’re alive, thriving, in love with God and each other, heaped on by fulfilling work to do and lots of friends and family to share good days with, albeit locked down at the moment.

I heard an interesting comment from Ravi Zacharias. It sounded familiar, but it re-struck me today. He said, “We are not people with souls, we are souls who just happen to be housed in people.”  

Like the lovely olive oil bottle in the kitchen, my ‘house’ may look okay (especially with a little spit polishing), but I have to consider what’s inside. One bottle, just like one person, may look pretty much like any other bottle or person, but it’s what’s inside that counts. 

Discovering what’s inside those around us can be a wonderful, uplifting experience. But at the same time, it can also be an opportunity for less-than-uplifting sharing. For example, today I came across a juicy piece of gossip and as most of you know, stuff like that just DEMANDS to be shared. 

Okay, I’m not an evil person. I knew better than to run for the phone and pass along a little tidbit dressed up like a “prayer request”. I confess too that a fleeting thought crossed my mind: “Sharing this on my BLOG wouldn’t be the same as gossip. Besides, most of my readers don’t even know the people I run with. What would be the harm? 

But the answer came pretty quickly. We’re all lovely bottles on the outside, but demeaning the contents of another diminishes us all. Like salt or soap, nobody wants it. Maybe I better start asking myself “what would my SOUL do?"

Hopefully we can all act like the soul that we are, in His image.  Let’s give it a go this week!

Thanks for listening, Marsha