Fish on Fridays

I've always liked seafood.  I will gladly eat a beautifully prepared piece of fish over almost anything.  When I was a child, schools served fish every Friday because of the Catholic mandate, so Friday was my favorite day to eat school lunch.  I almost always got three or four fish filets instead of the normal one because many of my friends didn't like it at all.  But even before my school days, we lived near the Gulf Coast of Alabama.  Fried shrimp was a staple.  My mother's gumbo was a regular soup in our home.  Many of our church friends there had boats or beach homes, so we were kept in plentiful supply of the fish and shrimp that we loved to eat. 

Knowing that seafood has been a part of my entire life, I think it's so odd that my parents had their first fish filet that was not fried when I was in high school.  In the deep South, people just fried anything that came out of the ocean.  Period.  And now that I am an adult and the mistress of my own kitchen, I have never fried seafood...ever.  Oh, we've had a nice crunchy fish filet that came frozen, but that was only to make the kids happy.  I usually prefer some sort of dill sauce or teriyaki or blackened preparation.  I love anything spicy with cilantro.  I like to try all kinds of ways to eat the fresh fish that we can get on the coast, but my parents still prefer theirs fried.  It's just a matter of taste. 

We have a very dear pastor friend who likes to say, "There is more than one way to skin a cat."  I must confess that this saying tickles me a bit.  I always want to pipe up and shout, "Name two!"  But I keep my cool and sit quietly in the pew.  But there is truth in this.  There will always be more than one way to do something.  We usually prepare things based on our tastes, but sometimes we are guided in our preparations based on the ingredients available in a given moment.  How many times have you looked in your pantry and realized that you lacked an ingredient that was necessary for what you had in your mind and needed to alter the menu a bit?  It happens often with me.  I find that I am constantly changing perspective on the menu.

I find that the Bible is like that in my life.  Today, I may read a verse one way only to read it completely different next week.  I'll explain.  Psalm 37:4 says, "Delight yourself in the Lord, and He will give you the desires of your heart."  It seems fairly straightforward.  If I am finding my joy in God, He sometimes will bless me with things that I want.  However, like the missing ingredients in my pantry, I sometimes find that my life isn't turning out to be exactly what I had wanted.  My own desires remain in my head and never materialize.  How, then, am I to make sense of a verse like this?  The Lord has shown me that perspective is gained when we read the Word in the very present tense through His interpretation over our lives.  The Word is alive to us today--not just written to be a beautiful transcript thousands of years ago.  I have looked at that verse again and am coming to read it more like this:  If I find my delight in the Lord, He will guide me in the forming of my desires.  In other words, He gives me the desires  (the things that I should be longing for) that will best benefit me, and because I delight in Him, I will rejoice in these desires and follow God's plan for me whole-heartedly!  I really like to look at the Scriptures in this way.  Today, I may see this interpretation.  Tomorrow, I may see another.  I should remain open to what God wants to say to me in each moment. 

I can't always plan a good menu.  I have often thought I would make a particular dish centered around having a singular ingredient only to find that it isn't in the pantry.  I just rearrange my thoughts and let the pantry help me make my new choice.  Maybe I want my fish grilled.  Maybe my mother wants hers fried.  The Word of God is alive and active for each of us, meeting our individual needs in the moment.  I'm really glad.  God's concern for us is so great that He wants good things for us as His individual children with our individual tastes.