The spice of life

Carolyn Lewis
Posted 11/25/21

The holidays are here again and my thoughts turn to special baking projects,

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The spice of life

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The holidays are here again and my thoughts turn to special baking projects, family dinners and great times together.  I love it when the house is full of great aromas of Christmas goodies and snacks galore.  Being a good cook, I’m familiar with spices and have used them all of my life.  They add zest and flavor to food, and emit a fragrant aroma throughout the house while the food is cooking.  Food without spices is flat and flavorless—and just plain boring.

In my Quiet Time one day I began to think about how God has spiced up my life since I received Him and made Him Lord of my life.  For instance, in a recipe you can use all the best ingredients, but if you have no seasoning something is missing.  Your food tastes bland and incomplete.  My life had plenty in it, but it seemed so empty, tasteless, and incomplete.  I had nothing to rely on when things happened that I couldn’t handle, and I had no help in making big decisions that came into my life.  My husband was gone most of the time over the years so when I started letting Christ guide my life and season it with His presence it really made a change in how I handled the adventures and circumstances I had to face.

There’s another aspect of seasoning, too.  We as Christians are to be as salt in the lives of others.  Even our speech is always to be with grace, seasoned with salt, so that we know how to respond to people.  And just as spice emits a fragrant aroma, God tells us that we are to be a sweet, fragrant aroma of Christ to those around us. He gives us the zest, the flavor, the aroma, and we are to pass it on to others.  And just as salt symbolized hospitality in the Bible times, we are to be hospitable to those God puts in our life in these times.  

There are times, however, that our lives seem to be seasoned with bitter herbs instead of sweet spices.  Many people are under the mistaken impression that being a Christian leads to a dull, gray existence.  But once you start reading the Bible you know that can’t be true; God’s people have led the most exciting lives of all.  

Early in Genesis it tells the tale of Noah, who led far from a boring life.  We are told that Noah found favor in the eyes of God, and was one of the only ones during that time that did.  God noticed how wicked and evil man had become and determined to blot him out. 

God told Noah to build an ark, because He was bringing a flood of water to destroy the earth.  Noah obeyed, and spent the next 120 years building the ark.  God told him to make it big enough for his family and pairs of all the animals, birds of the air, and creeping things of the earth.  We know that Noah was ridiculed during this time, and it couldn’t have been easy, but he persevered, knowing it was what God wanted him to do.  But think for a moment about another family member that was involved in all of this—Noah’s wife—what was she thinking all this time?  God had told Noah what to do, not Mrs. Noah.  She must have trusted him completely, but I’ll bet it wasn’t easy. What do you suppose the women said to her as they gathered around the well?  “What’s your husband up to, Mrs. Noah?  Building a what?  But it’s never rained! Wait, wasn’t his grandfather Methuselah 969 when he died?  And Noah is 500?  Do you suppose it’s that mid-life crisis thing we’ve been hearing about?”

And then imagine 370 days on board with your sons, their wives, and 45,000 critters.  Did they split up all the duties and chores?  Maybe Mrs. Noah was expecting life to get a little easier at 500 years old, and this was obviously no vacation.

After they boarded the ark, God sealed them in.  They were exactly where He wanted them to be.  And the first thing they did after their voyage was to build an altar and sacrifice to God with the extra animals they had brought with them for that purpose.  The Lord smelled the soothing aroma, and He accepted their sacrifice.  Then, God gave them the sign of the rainbow, His promise to never again destroy the earth in that way.  

And then they moved into the next stage of their lives.  Gen 9:20 says, “Then Noah began farming….”  His life was never going to be boring!  But we are all here to celebrate the holidays because of his obedience to God, and through it all he was thankful to God and offered sweet-smelling sacrifices to  Him.

This holiday season we have so much to be thankful for; we are on dry land; we have friends and family to enjoy, a wonderful country to live in, and blessings galore.  Let’s all take a little time along the way to praise God for all He has done for us and be thankful.  1 Thess 5:16-18 “Rejoice always; pray without ceasing; in everything give thanks; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.