Making Pumpkin Muffins
If you spend much time with the Tennant family, you will likely taste something incredible that has come from their kitchen. Making delicious food is part of their family culture. Even Jack, (age 2) likes to “make” in the kitchen.
After one particularly hectic week, Steph was telling me that she woke Jack up in the morning and he seemed a little off. As she slowed her morning to attend to him, he said, “I just wanna make wi’chew, Mama!” So, they made pumpkin muffins, and pretty soon all was right in his world.
The act of creating something out of a set of seemingly random ingredients is sacred.
If you flip your bible open to the verrrry beginning...we see God doing an awful lot of work. He is bringing order to the chaos of that which was “formless and empty”. He is separating dark from light. He is instructing, managing, designing, and analyzing. And in the end, He is pleased with His work!
This week, Kyle preached about the value of work, and how the sacredness of it can so easily get distorted to seem fruitless, pointless, selfish, and how it even reveals our idols. Yet, Jesus redeems our work simply by being a part of it.
Back to the Tennant’s kitchen: The thing is, Kyle and Stephanie don’t NEED Jack to help crack the eggs and stir in the spelt flour. They aren’t waking him up at 5 am to bake bread for the week while they are off doing other things. That would be a disaster! On the contrary, they could whip up a batch of pumpkin muffins much faster if they didn’t have his precious little hands in the mix. But the goal isn’t the only outcome or the efficiency of their kitchen, the goal is the time together. They aren’t just making muffins, they are making a relationship. The delicious things they get to enjoy at the end of the process are really just part of the benefit.
We all go through seasons that our work just seems like the absolute worst part of our lives. The unending monotony, or the overwhelming impossibility of the tasks before us can make it hard to get out of bed on Monday morning. Yet, work is an important part of what it means to be human.
Maybe, we can take notes from Jack.
Maybe when you wake up feeling “blech” about your work for the day, you can reach up to our Father and say, “Daddy, I just wanna make wi’chew!” (You can put that in your own words. He’ll know what you mean.)
Then, pay attention to His presence as you go through your day’s tasks.
He may give some input on how to handle a difficult situation or relationship.
He may cheer you on when you do something particularly well.
He may gently correct you when we are headed into harm’s way.
And theeeen...after you have spent all that time building your relationship, you’ll get to sit back and enjoy whatever it is you have made together. :)
-Randi
Randi Banning is married to Jairus, and they live in Cortland with their four children. Randi serves on the Regen Oversight Team and co-leads the Regen Care Team.
