Saturday I was fixing breakfast for the family. I was fixing pancakes, the whole grain kind. Hey I am getting older and need to get used to that stuff and the kids use enough syrup that they do not know the difference! It could be a piece of carpet under all that syrup and they would not know the difference. Anyway, back to the real story. Speaking of rabbit trails, I tried to take my beagle back outside to chain him up this morning, he was busy trying to follow all of the rabbit tracks in the snow. Man he was everywhere! Do pets really take on the personality of their owners? I do not chase rabbit trails do I? Ok, maybe the people take on the personality of their pet instead. Ok, now back to the real story for really real this time.
When ever I flipped the pancakes they would kind of get all warped on the side I had just griddled (is that a word?) I like my pancakes to be flat and smooth which makes no sense because then the butter and syrup run right off and do not soak in. So I would take the spatula and smack the pancake to make it flat again. All the women are now screaming, “What are you doing? Don’t you know how to make pancakes?” Which is the very reason for this story. My wife noticed this and promptly told me that hitting the pancakes would make them hard. Being a typical man I muttered under my breath, where she couldn’t hear of course, something like, “Leave me alone woman, I know what I am doing.” Now the men are saying, “If you were typical man you would not be cooking breakfast.” Men, you would be surprised how many brownie points that wins; you ought to try it sometime. Plus our women have to live with us so they deserve our help sometimes and if Christ died for His Church and God told us to love our wives the way Jesus loved the Church then the least we can do is make some pancakes. Well, after I got over myself I was hit with a Forest Gump moment only this time life was not like a box of chocolates. Life is like being a pancake is it not? Society and even the Church have their idea of how we should look and when we get a little warped from their idea they smack us into submission. Even when doing so makes us less effective in our mission because now we are not allowed to be what God created us to be and God created us a certain way to serve a certain purpose in His Kingdom and now we can’t serve that purpose. Now instead of being shaped the way God shaped us we have become flat and hard and can’t serve the higher purpose. Now I am not saying that there are not certain standards to live by. There is an absolute right and absolute wrong way to live, however, none of God’s standards will ever prevent you from being what He created you to be. That would be insane and God is way smarter than that.
It would be nice to tell people to back-off and let us be what God created us to be, but if that ever happens it will be a long time coming. So in the meantime we need to work on ourselves. We need to not allow life and others to make us hard on the inside or flat on the outside. Allow only God to shape us, and He is not standing over us with a big spatula making us all the same shape. Take heart in knowing that God created you unique for a unique purpose that only you can accomplish. Find friends, family, and a Church that will support and encourage you to use your God-given shape to build His kingdom and then life will have purpose and keep you moldable to His will. Besides, if we all work on ourselves in this area we will stop beating others into submission and if the people stop, society will stop, and we will instead encourage each other.
When ever I flipped the pancakes they would kind of get all warped on the side I had just griddled (is that a word?) I like my pancakes to be flat and smooth which makes no sense because then the butter and syrup run right off and do not soak in. So I would take the spatula and smack the pancake to make it flat again. All the women are now screaming, “What are you doing? Don’t you know how to make pancakes?” Which is the very reason for this story. My wife noticed this and promptly told me that hitting the pancakes would make them hard. Being a typical man I muttered under my breath, where she couldn’t hear of course, something like, “Leave me alone woman, I know what I am doing.” Now the men are saying, “If you were typical man you would not be cooking breakfast.” Men, you would be surprised how many brownie points that wins; you ought to try it sometime. Plus our women have to live with us so they deserve our help sometimes and if Christ died for His Church and God told us to love our wives the way Jesus loved the Church then the least we can do is make some pancakes. Well, after I got over myself I was hit with a Forest Gump moment only this time life was not like a box of chocolates. Life is like being a pancake is it not? Society and even the Church have their idea of how we should look and when we get a little warped from their idea they smack us into submission. Even when doing so makes us less effective in our mission because now we are not allowed to be what God created us to be and God created us a certain way to serve a certain purpose in His Kingdom and now we can’t serve that purpose. Now instead of being shaped the way God shaped us we have become flat and hard and can’t serve the higher purpose. Now I am not saying that there are not certain standards to live by. There is an absolute right and absolute wrong way to live, however, none of God’s standards will ever prevent you from being what He created you to be. That would be insane and God is way smarter than that.
It would be nice to tell people to back-off and let us be what God created us to be, but if that ever happens it will be a long time coming. So in the meantime we need to work on ourselves. We need to not allow life and others to make us hard on the inside or flat on the outside. Allow only God to shape us, and He is not standing over us with a big spatula making us all the same shape. Take heart in knowing that God created you unique for a unique purpose that only you can accomplish. Find friends, family, and a Church that will support and encourage you to use your God-given shape to build His kingdom and then life will have purpose and keep you moldable to His will. Besides, if we all work on ourselves in this area we will stop beating others into submission and if the people stop, society will stop, and we will instead encourage each other.
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