To start, you need 3 quarts of good clean water. We begin our lives as children of God after being baptized, washed with the waters of the earth made holy by Jesus’ baptism.
You need a pound of dried split peas. Peas, when cooked for hours, will turn to mush, but they’re full of fiber and make much better soup when mush than hard. Sometimes when we’re subjected to extreme circumstances we often find ourselves turning to mush; we lose our resolve. BUT, if we’ve been growing in God’s garden, we’ve also been gifted with the fiber to withstand those circumstances and we will be transformed into a new creation.
You need leftovers from Christmas or Easter dinner. Our family often has a spiral cut ham for our holiday dinner. Usually there are some leftovers and I always freeze them to make pea soup during the cold of winter. A few pieces of ham can add flavor, protein and bulk to a large pot of soup, stretching a few pieces of ham into soup for several meals. God is a god of abundance. God gives us gifts and talents and love to spare and to share. If we throw them away, we have wasted God’s gifts and others will suffer for their lack. If we put them aside and don’t use them, we hide our light under a bushel and our gifts are of no good to anyone, including ourselves. However, when we pull them out and use them, we have plenty to share and our gifts are multiplied.
You need herbs and spices. While the salt is already plentiful in our leftovers, we need some garlic, pepper, and basil to really add flavor. God has given us the salt in our lives. The gifts He has given us will leach out into the soup of life that we flavor. “You are the salt for the world, O People, Salt for the City of God,” says one of our hymns. Also, our lives are best enjoyed when we are willing to be enriched by the gifts of others. It is the experiences that we share with others that spice up our lives and give it flavor. God has created us to be in community with each other so that we might enrich others and be enriched by them.
You need supporting vegetables for nutrition and taste…carrots, onions and celery. God gives us tools to nourish, flavor and sustain our lives. We have the Word of God and the sacrament of Holy Communion to nourish and sustain us from week to week. We have the community of believers in Christ to support and enrich us.
You need time. This is the step I frequently forget about when making pea soup. I set out to start dinner and suddenly realize I didn’t plan this out well and we’re going to be eating very late tonight. Pea soup needs a couple of hours to cook or you’ll end up with cement or runny liquid and hard peas. Our lives are a journey toward a perfect relationship with God that is made possible because of Jesus. It takes a lifetime to get there. It is a journey where we will be tested, boiled down into mush, so that we can be re-made into something wonderful. If we try to rush things and do things in OUR time, we usually screw up the soup. If we allow things to cook along in GOD’S time, our soup – our lives, will be full of flavor and texture, and there will be plenty for everyone.
And lastly, pea soup stinks. So do our sinful lives. But pea soup tastes delicious regardless of the smell. (Well to a lot of people…maybe you’ve got a different soup with a similar analogy!) God loves us no matter how much we screw up the soup. He forgives us and adds the corrective spices, flavors, ingredients and cooking time so that when He’s ready to invite us to the banquet feast, we have been re-created into a perfect recipe that He is proud to share with His family.
Because ALL that He has created is good, and that includes YOU.
How has God flavored your life? In what ways have you been boiled down into mush? Do you see how He is re-creating you?
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