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My husband would never say this to my face, but I make a terrible housewife. I run kicking and screaming from anything related to the field of "domestic engineering." I don't like to do housework. As for cooking? You might say that when I cook, it doesn't matter if it comes from a box or not - it's usually Old Testament cuisine. "Burnt Offerings." So much so, that when when we were buying our house ten years ago, our insurance agent would not sell us a homeowner's policy unless we had a fire hydrant in our front yard. (OK, not true. But we really do have a fire hydrant about 30 feet from my kitchen window!)

One of my most memorable creative cuisinery attempts was home made soup. As I remember, it was vegetable soup. I was reheating some leftovers, and decided to have a chat with someone on the computer. It wasn't long before my leftover soup burned and became one with the pan.

A Burnt offering. A Burnt Soup Offering.

Retelling the incident makes me ponder ... If I woke up tomorrow and I had a whole bucket full of soup, would it be right to offer it unto the Lord as a burnt offering? ...

No, probably not. I remember the aroma from just a little bit of burnt soup. It was not pleasing to me. I can be fairly certain that the aroma from a whole bucket full of burnt soup would not be pleasing to the Lord.

Besides, God doesn't want our burnt offerings - soup or anything else. He doesn't want our stuff. What thing could we offer Him anyway? After all, He's the one who created the stuff that the stuff is made of in the first place.

No, what God wants from us can be summed up in two statements. Jesus tells us to:
  1. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.
  2. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Pretty simple. Love God, and love others. All other rules come from those two basics.

I admit, it's not always easy to keep those two commandments. We fail. A lot. And sometimes those failures are disastrous, like burnt soup that is worthy of being thrown away, pan and all. But God will never throw us away. Nothing can separate us from His love, and when we confess our sins to God, He is faithful to forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness!

While God loves us deeply and is involved in every part of our lives, He is not so much concerned about what we feed ourselves physically, but more that our spiritual hunger is satisfied. The best I can offer you is burnt soup. Jesus offers himself - the Bread of Life.

Comments

BlueRidge Boomer said…
Great post....very thoughtful!!

Enjoy...LindaMay
7:29 AM
Oy vey said…
I love that story! And as always, you've hit the nail on the head, spiritually speaking.
8:15 AM
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