Ratatouille

I made ratatouille for supper tonight. I love ratatouille. It's one of those dishes that you can't make wrong; you just endlessly experiment with different variations on the theme of vegetables, seasonings, and cooking method. Ratatouille is a reflection of now. ( And in your best Julia Child voice you can say "aubergine" instead of eggplant! How delightfully snooty.)

Grace should be like ratatouille. We forget that sometimes. We forget that the life of Christ in each of us has myriad variations and we begin to stick to the tried and true and to expect it of others. We begin to look for results. We want a uniform finished product. We stop trusting God to walk through us and, instead, we walk in what we know. We trade the opportunity to move in unison with a wild, untamable God for the safety of a merry-go-round ride. We, in short, settle for religion over relationship.

We settle because we convince ourselves that we're less likely to miss God this way.

We settle because we're afraid that God really won't come through for us.

We settle because there's security in the familiar.

We settle because somewhere, deep, down inside, we believe that God might love others that way, but not us.

We settle because waiting on God is hard and we decide He might actually need our help.

We settle because, for many of us, keeping God at arms length is just more comfortable.

We settle because we lose hope.

And the delicious, fragrant life that God has for each of us becomes a stale, dull routine of servitude and drudgery. And we call that life in Christ!! BLECCH!!! No wonder the world turns up their collective nose at it!

I'm sorry but God's life in us can't be reduced to a recipe card of do's and don't's.

This walk of faith is about us: unique, quirky, one-of-a-kind individuals, and the Holy Spirit. Christ's life reproduced in us is a never before seen and never to be repeated event. It's new, fresh, and evolving-everyday.

It's not yesterday. It's not tomorrow. It's TODAY.

It's not leftovers or prepackaged microwave dinners. It's organic and real.

It's not religion. It's LIFE.

When's the last time you tasted and saw that the Lord is good?