Cooking with Love

My husband (you also know him as Pastor Rob) has a culinary gifting.  This man can whip together an amazing meal after just having been inspired by a show on Food Network or something we ate at a restaurant.  Somehow he knows exactly which seasonings to add, how long to cook it, and what pairs well together.

That cooking was missed by me today. I had an incredibly lackluster lunch this afternoon.  It was bland and uninspired.  Harsh spices overtook the food, while other parts of the meal desperately needed flavor.  Details were not tended to.  It was plain sloppy.

Of the many things that lunch was missing, most importantly it was missing LOVE.  That extra ‘something’.  The tiny details that show how much passion and care went into its preparation and service.

As Rob says, ‘I put love into everything I cook.’  And that difference is evident.

Love requires a greater effort.  Love is more than a desire to make something good, it must be carried into action.  Today made me consider, ‘How much ‘love’ am I putting into everything I do?’  Are my actions a concoction of whatever I have available to me, tossed together, with some salt hastily thrown on top to hopefully make it more flavorful?

In The Word

1 Corinthians 13: 1-7 - The Way of Love
 1 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don't love, I'm nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate. 2If I speak God's Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, "Jump," and it jumps, but I don't love, I'm nothing. 3-7If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don't love, I've gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I'm bankrupt without love.

   Love never gives up.
   Love cares more for others than for self.
   Love doesn't want what it doesn't have.
   Love doesn't strut,
   Doesn't have a swelled head,
   Doesn't force itself on others,
   Isn't always "me first,"
   Doesn't fly off the handle,
   Doesn't keep score of the sins of others,
   Doesn't revel when others grovel,
   Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
   Puts up with anything,
   Trusts God always,
   Always looks for the best,
   Never looks back,
   But keeps going to the end.

...Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

*Photo from jogilvie