Lots of Lettuce

 

"Wow, you sure got a lot of lettuce!"  I said as I was carrying in things from our minivan.  Elaine had just gotten a pickup at Sam's Club and there were many things that needed to be carried in as a result.  Five growing children do take nourishment on a semi-regular basis.

"Only what we usually get," my wife said breezily.  "It takes a lot of groceries to feed our family these days,"

At this moment our oldest, Anna, appeared.  "Mom, there's tons of cucumbers in the van!"  She said.

Elaine started to figure out something wasn't quite right.  "How many cucumbers are there?"  She asked.

The answer seemed to be 12 cucumbers -- and 24 "Hearts of Romaine" heads of lettuce.  Somehow she had pushed extra numbers beside those items on her order.

"I see a lot of salad in our future," I said prophetically.

There's an odd saying that "When life gives you lemons, you should make lemonade."  This statement, of course, assumes that you have access to plenty of sugar.  Beyond that, there are plenty of times when God sends heads on heads of lettuce our way and we don't even like salad that much.

What do you do when you come home with too many ingredients that don't seem to go together?

These days, with the internet it is relatively easy to type in the list of ingredients that we have and come up with some sort of weird dish that includes cucumbers, lettuce, and granola bars.  In the rest of life it isn't so easy.

Many times it seems as though we are given ingredients that just don't go together.  Worse, we are given foods that we simply despise.

I remember the story of the Israelites traveling through the desert of the Sinai peninsula.  Every day held the same food choice -- manna.  It was nutrition filled and well balanced.  It even tasted good -- the first eighty times they ate it.

Joy comes when we are able to trust that the Cook has gotten the right ingredients for our lives.  God is the Master Chef who somehow is able able to take the disparate ingredients and make something worthwhile of them.

Even 24 heads of lettuce and 12 cucumbers.