I was not exactly valedictorian of my junior high school home economics class. At my school, students took home-ec in three nine-week sessions, each taught by a different teacher. The cooking and sewing teachers, Miss Faris and Miss Gummere, seemed old enough to have catered the Last Supper. And in my seventh-grade estimation, they were as tough and scary as a pair of rattlesnakes.
My first cooking experience in home-ec ended with Miss Faris loudly berating me for trying to broil cinnamon toast in the pan drawer of the classroom’s electric oven. Okay, it wasn’t as boneheaded as it sounds – we had a gas oven at home and our broiler was a drawer that pulled out from underneath the oven.
My big sewing class project was a terminally ugly hat. Miss Gummere didn’t care that I was genetically predisposed to be a terrible seamstress and that my mother’s attempts to make clothes were rare, noble and always ill-fated. When Miss Gummere returned my ugly hat with a grade, she included a note that said, “I wanted to give you an ‘F’ but I had to give you a ‘C-minus’ because you tried so hard.” I learned that trying hard may be virtuous, but operating so ridiculously far outside the parameters of one’s talents and interests is nothing but futile and frustrating.
My sewing hasn’t improved much since then, but my cooking skills have been honed considerably. Don’t look for me on the Food Network, but know that I can hold my own in the kitchen. I don’t have Betty Crockeresque delusions of baking grandeur, but I do try to whip up goodies for my family fairly often. Apparently not often enough, however, as I discovered when I had a conversation with one of my sons that went like this:
“Hey Mom, it smells good in here. What is it?”
“It’s a cake.”
“Who’s it for?”
“Whaddayamean ‘who’s it for?’ It’s for us, of course.”
“Oh – I figured it must be for someone else.”
I realized that my son thinks that if I’m baking something good, we must be having company over for dinner or I must be planning to take it to someone else. In other words, his erroneous perception is that my best baking efforts are usually reserved for others, not for my own family.
Lots of folks seem to feel that same way about the favor and blessings of God. Many Christians just can’t get their hearts and minds wrapped around the fact that God longs to be good to His children. Yes, He sometimes allows necessary, difficult circumstances in our lives; but many times, He just plain wants to bless us.
Read Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:11: “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask Him!”
And Isaiah 30:18a: “And therefore the Lord [earnestly] waits [expecting, looking, and longing] to be gracious to you …” (Amplified Bible)
The next time you come across one of God’s amazing promises in the Bible, don’t think, “Hey, that’s a great promise, but I guess it’s for Billy Graham or missionaries or other Super Christians.” No, if you’re His child – if you have received His grace and believed in the name of Jesus Christ (John 1:12) – hear God saying, “It’s for you, My child … it’s for you. Receive and enjoy.”
God loves to cook up blessings for all of His kids.