“Stare into the pantry.” I ought to just go ahead and write that on my to-do list. You’ve probably heard me whine about it before. I hate it when I realize I’ve been standing, staring and pondering for 15 minutes and still have no idea what could possibly come together for a dinner.
I recently found myself gawking at the pitiful assortment in there, drumming my fingers on the pantry door, trying to figure out what I could get from half a bag of macaroni, the creams from a box of assorted chocolates and a packet of some sort of fondue mix. The chocolates, incidentally, were all pinched and the only ones left were those chocolate crème things. You know, the ones with the orange centers? Sometimes green? C’mon, nobody wants those. Why do they even make those things?
Anyway, I thought I might be onto something special – maybe some sort of casserole – when I managed to scrounge up half a dozen Taco Bell sauce packets, some stale pretzels and part of a box of Kit ‘N Caboodle. Then I thought, Wait, no. That last one is cat food. That’s not going to make a nice casserole for anyone human. And I don’t cook for the cat.
Alas, I could neither fon this nor due that from anything in there. That was probably just as well seeing as that packet of fondue mix might very well have been from the 70s.
Since I was getting nowhere in the pantry, I moved on to the fridge – though not before licking the chocolate off one of those green crème things. Hey, a girl needs to keep up her strength when she’s trolling for dinner. In the fridge I found several containers, but none I was entirely willing to open. I shook one of the containers but I’m pretty sure that just made it angry.
That “what’s for dinner” question is regularly a tough one for me. Sometimes when it’s been too long between grocery shopping trips. Other times when we’re all stocked up and there’s actually too much to choose from. What’s a gal to fon-do?
I’m so glad my Heavenly Father has never found Himself staring into the world, trying to put together something redeemable. He chose me. Are you a believer? It’s because He chose you. Paul reveals in Eph. 1:4-6 that He planned it. “For He chose us in Him, before the foundation of the world, to be holy and blameless in His sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted through Jesus Christ for Himself, according to His favor and will, to the praise of His glorious grace that He favored us with in the Beloved.”
God’s decision to make us into something special wasn’t some spur of the moment decision. He had already made that decision long ago, before He even formed the planet. “Predestined” and “adopted” through Jesus Christ. That’s what we are. It speaks of great forethought. And grace. Verse 10 tells us the plan was “to bring everything together in the Messiah, both things in heaven and things on earth in Him.”
Bringing “everything together.” It almost sounds like a glorious, heavenly casserole, doesn’t it? Chosen – all by, because of, and for Jesus. That’s what makes us special. Nothing we do. Nothing we cook. Nothing.
Maybe that means it wouldn’t hurt to cook something for the cat. I wonder if cats fondue.