Dumplings

ByHal Hammons

I frustrated Tracie for years over chicken and dumplings — a high-carb dish that, sadly, no longer occupies a place at the top of my requests list.  (Don’t let that deter you, ladies of the church; I will break whatever dietary rules I must at your respective houses.  It’s just the kind of guy I am.)

       Tracie’s dumplings, you see, never suited. And she tried everything.  But the consistency was always off.  My standard, of course, was what I grew up with — my Mimmee’s chicken and dumplings. The little pieces of chewy, doughy goodness were the highlight of Saturday evening dinner.

Come to find out much later, Mimmee just took raw canned biscuits and cut them in pieces.  That was her “secret recipe.”  Sorry again, Tracie.

To be fair, Tracie’s dumplings were probably better than Mimmee’s.  They just weren’t what I was used to, and therefore incorrect.  The problem was with me, not Tracie.  Not the first time this phenomenon reared its ugly head.  Or the last.

We can take that approach toward spiritual things as well — or, perhaps more accurately put, our application of spiritual things.  We can mostly agree, for instance, that the Lord’s Supper should be taken on the first day of the week (Acts 20:7), and that spiritual songs should be sung to honor God and instruct the brethren (Colossians 3:16).  It may be that you have become accustomed to performing these tasks in a way that “suits.”  And that’s fine.  But let’s not blind ourselves to alternative methods that might be more effective and worshipful.  And let’s certainly not look down our noses at brethren who dare to reject our “secret recipe.”

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You are what you eat

ByHal Hammons

Perhaps you have heard of “food deserts.”  The term refers to places where people have limited (or less) access to grocery stores and other sources of healthy food.  Now there are “food swamps” — that is, where food is plentiful, just not nourishing.  Food swamps feature lots of gas stations, fast-food joints, and other places that promote obesity and bad eating habits.  No farmer’s markets or kale smoothie shops, though.

Studies differ with regard to whether proximity to grocery stores is actually an indicator of general health.  (They sell Snickers bars at Publix, you know.)  But there’s certainly a case to be made that the food’s quality may be as much a factor as its availability.

“Food” is relative — whether the food is carnal or spiritual.  We can pat ourselves on the back all we want for “going to church” or even “reading the Bible.”  But if we are not nourishing our spirits, what good is any of it?  A preacher who does not “preach the word” (2 Timothy 2:2), substituting human philosophy and personal opinions, may be doing more harm than good.  Reading for five minutes just to say you did it, without an eye for application or contextual understanding, may be feed a sense of “fullness” that is completely misleading.

With that in mind, consider the following spiritual nutrition tips:

Dead mice, baby eagles, and children

ByHal Hammons

We saw what appeared to be (from inside a car moving at 30 miles per hour) a dead mouse on the road the other day.  It struck me because I had just been thinking how rare that is.  We see dead possums, raccoons, and various other critters all the time in these parts.  But mice, which surely are as plentiful as any of the others, manage to escape road-pizzadom.  Until last week.

As is generally the case, I have a theory.  I think mice have smaller lives than the other, larger mammals decorating the highways and byways of the Florida Panhandle.  They do not need to roam far from their nests, so they have much less reason to cross 20 feet of asphalt.  That has certain advantages which, given the circumstances of this conversation, would seem to be obvious.  And perhaps they are not worldly wise enough to appreciate the disadvantages.  But we appreciate them on their behalf.  And we can’t help but pity them a bit.  The experience is worth the danger, I say.  I suspect you agree.

I write this having pushed one of my mice out of the nest recently.  The other one will follow one day.  And in many ways, it would be safer for them if they stayed home, keeping their lives small and uncomplicated.  But I want more for them than that.  So occasionally, like the eagle of Deuteronomy 32:11, I stir the nest up a bit.  I remain close at hand to catch them if they aren’t quite self-sufficient, certainly. 

But it’s not my job to make them safe.  It’s my job to make them fly.

I want a full life for my children.  But they have a greater chance of heartbreak if they get married.  A child who is never born to them can never apostatize.  They can’t get fired if they never get a job.  So if my top priority is keeping them from the bad things in this world, the reasonable thing to do is to shelter them from all the decisions that can go poorly.  As a side benefit, I get extra people at the table on board game night for the rest of my life.

And then, one day, I’ll die.  Tracie too.  And two teenagers in the bodies of women in their 60s will be left by themselves, completely unfit for life. 

I don’t want that.  So I let them grow.  When necessary, I force them to grow.

Training a child (Proverbs 22:6) is a multistage process.  First they watch.  Then they help.  Then you help.  Then you watch.  Then you leave.  Whether you are teaching them to bake a cake, build a friendship, serve society, or study the Bible, the process is the same.  You will probably go backward a step or two from time to time to finetune their skills.  But the objective is always to abandon them.  They must be allowed to fly.  And, yes, perhaps crash.  Hey, if Geppetto wanted Pinocchio to stay safe, he shouldn’t have wished for a real, live boy.

The problem I see with “helicopter parents,” as they’ve come to be called, is ultimately selfishness.  The parent cannot bear to let the child go, for fear of either the child’s failure or the parents’ isolation; in so doing the parent stifles the child’s development.  Either the child’s life remains small forever, or the child one day wakes up in a world for which he or she is completely unprepared.  And gets run over.  This is fine for parents in the short term.  They don’t have to cut the cord, and they don’t have to watch their child suffer quite as much.  But it hurts the child in the long run.  They can’t sleep in cribs forever.

“The discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4) has to be administered by me, the parent.  I teach them what God’s expectations are.  I train them.  I correct them.  I show them the proper way, both in word and in example.  And always, I emphasize that it is His guidance, ultimately, and not mine.  I teach them to obey me (Ephesians 6:1) so they will be positioned to obey Jesus (Matthew 7:21) — even when I am not around to guide them. 

Yes, it hurts to watch them disappear into the world.  But it would hurt more if I left them unprepared, thinking that day somehow would never come.   HH

 

The Gospel of Beer

ByHal Hammons

Thank you for being here today.  You had options.  There are churches all over, offering all sorts of incentives and enticements.  For instance, the Castle Church Brewing Community in Orlando bills itself as “Orlando’s newest destination brewery.”  If you are asking yourself, “Is that what it sounds like?”, the answer is yes.  They actually brew, sell and drink beer.  Not in the actual assembly, mind you — at least, not as far as I can tell.  But immediately afterward, and pretty much any other opportunity that affords itself.

Allergy

ByHal Hammons

A young girl ate a cookie.  And now she is dead.

It happened right here in Florida, just last month.  She was at a friend’s house.  The cookie had peanut butter in it.  She went into anaphylactic shock.  Her parents administered two EpiPens.  It was all for naught. She died about an hour later.

The story I read said she “accidentally” ate the cookie.  I have eaten many cookies in my day, and (without trying to sound dismissive) that is pretty much impossible.  She ate the cookie on purpose.  She ate peanuts,  and died, on accident.